I was 19 years old & I thought I knew everything.
I walked into a little music shop wanting to trade in my amplifier for a better one. The owner looked at me and said, “No. You don’t want that one. That’s the one you want,” and pointed at something twice the price. I didn’t listen. I bought the cheaper one anyway.
A few months later, I stood at a Walmart checkout with a $19.99 tent and a $10 sleeping bag, headed for a freezing weekend in the mountains. The old man behind the register looked at my gear, looked at me, and told me flat out I didn’t want that one. I didn’t listen that time, either.
At four in the morning, wrapped in that ten-dollar sleeping bag, shivering in the front seat of my truck with the heater running, I finally understood something: I thought I knew what I wanted. What I got wasn’t it. And deep down, I already knew it wouldn’t be.
Most of us do this more than we’d like to admit. We reach for the cheaper substitute, the faster fix, the thing that looks close enough, and we end up further from the life we actually wanted.
There’s a reason for that. And Jesus explained it, in detail, on the last night of His life.
