Hurt Road: A 7-Day Devotional By Third Day Guitarist Mark LeeSample

Landmarks

Just like we need landmarks to help us find our way around town, God gives us landmarks to help us navigate our way through life. They’re not answers written in black and white, because God has given us a say in the matter. They’re more like clues to help us figure out the way and guides to help us get there. 

Home is a landmark. Any navigational app worth its salt will show you how to get there. But home is just a starting point for most journeys. And when the destination is un- known, we need landmarks to help make our way. God also puts people in our lives to serve as landmarks. In the early days of my own life it was mainly my family, but there were also teachers and friends at school. And since church was such a big part of my life, pastors and choir directors and Sunday school teachers would also prove to be very important. 

Then there are those landmark experiences we all have. Some kind of strange alchemy happens in our brains, and for some reason we carry around certain memories with us more than others. Those memories shape us and help guide us as well.

I quickly found that faith itself was—and is—an important landmark in life. Prayer used to feel like a chore; now I found myself wanting to pray first thing in the morning. Soon after getting saved, I was given a picture Bible by some family friends and I tore through it, then started reading a regular Bible. 

Faith is a definite landmark but it’s just the beginning of the story. If life with God was only about faith, then God would just zap us up to heaven when we accept him into our hearts. He has something far more exciting than that. He wants us to have a part to play in his story. 

A lot of people trip up on this idea and try to make it more complicated than it is. But if we look at how God wired each of us, what kinds of interests we have, we realize we have internal landmarks to point toward the reason we’re here. 

What landmarks in your life point to where you are today and who you want to become? Consider books, places, people, ideas, school classes, songs….