You Can’t Optimize What Jesus Told Us to Deny

Bottom line upfront: Most of us are hard at work optimizing a self Jesus told us to deny. And we don’t even know we’re doing it.

Confession. I checked my smartphone and watch before I got out of bed this morning. Before I prayed. Before I said good morning to Char. I wanted to know how I slept and what is important to do today. The watch told me a number and a color. And that number decided how my day was going to go.

Seventy-five years old, and a little machine on my wrist is grading my night.

Here’s what’s happened, whether you noticed or not. We are living in the optimization era. Rings that read your heart rate variability while you sleep. Watches that count steps, stairs, stress. Patches that track your blood sugar after lunch. Apps that tell you—before coffee—whether to push hard or take it easy.

Sam Neame, a U.K.-based performance coach and writer, put it plainly: we used to wake up and simply know how we felt. Rested. Tired. Somewhere in between. Now technology tells us how we’re supposed to feel before our feet hit the floor.

And here’s the part that stings. Sleep researchers have a name for people so anxious about their sleep score that the tracking itself wrecks their sleep. Orthosomnia. We built a device to help us rest… and it’s keeping us up at night.

I’m not against the tools. Like I said, I wear one. Stewardship of the body is biblical—“your body is a temple,” Paul says. A ring that shows your resting heart rate climbing for a week can get you to a doctor before something breaks. That’s good.

But watch the drift. The data was supposed to be information. Somewhere along the way it became a verdict. Did you hit your steps? Did you close your rings? Did you recover well enough to deserve a hard day? Miss a workout and it feels like sin. Take a rest day and the app scolds you.

That’s not health. That’s a new law.

So, let me ask a different question: If we’re this focused on optimizing the body, what are we doing with the soul?

Because the same market has come for your spiritual life. I spent the last few weeks looking at what’s out there. Prayer apps that reward streaks. Habit trackers for your quiet time. Meditation timers. “Spiritual wellness scores.” AI coaches “tuned to your path.” One app literally promotes a spiritual workout—a daily routine you complete and log.

Some of it is fine. A reminder to open Scripture is a mercy for a forgetful man like me. I have no quarrel with a tool that cues a holy habit.

Pay attention to what these tools can and can’t tell you. They can tell you whether you opened your Bible. But they can’t tell you whether you loved your wife better because of it. They can log a forty-day prayer streak. But they can’t detect the bitterness that is still running the house. They can score consistency. But they cannot score humility, repentance, or the fruit of the Spirit.

Which is why I need to say this to my friends over fifty. You didn’t grow up with a fancy health-ring grading your sleep performance. You grew up knowing how you felt when you woke up. You have decades of walking with God that no app ever logged. Don’t let anyone—including a shiny new device—convince you that you’re irrelevant. You may be the least optimized people in the room. But you are also the most seasoned. The Kingdom needs seasoned people, not optimized.

So here’s where I’m leaving you this week:

Self-optimization promises a better version of you. A better body. A better routine. Maybe even a better quiet time. But Jesus never asked for a better version of you. “‘If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me’” (Matthew 16:24).

Not upgrade himself. Not optimize himself. Deny himself.

Here’s the question I’m left pondering: Does self-optimization ever lead to meaningful life transformation? Or is it a very sophisticated way of staying exactly who we already are?

Next week I’ll show you what our research says. And I don’t think it's a spoiler to say that the answer isn’t what the app store is selling.

Here’s your challenge. Tomorrow morning, before you look at any screen, ask God how you’re doing. Then sit still long enough to hear something. That’s how you build a life-changing relationship with God, not just maintain a streak for some wellness app on your watch.

All in, eyes up! 

PS — This week’s Spiritually Fit Today is five days on the rooms of our heart that we don’t let Jesus into-one room at a time: the ministry room, the “safe” room, the bitterness room, and the one somebody else can see into — all under the same question: did that move me closer to Jesus, or away from Him?