We want to welcome everyone to the Zoe Church podcast. We are so grateful that you jumped on today.

Before we jump into the message today from a guest, but also a family member of our house,

Pastor Ben Graves is bringing a beautiful message. Before we do, we want to invite you to partner with us in the area of giving.

You can give to zoeachurch.org. Let's check out this message together.

Matthew chapter 16, 24 through 25. It says this, then Jesus told his disciples,

if anyone would come after me,

let him or herself, deny himself, take up his cross and follow me.

For whoever would save his life will lose it, but if whoever loses his life for my sake,

we'll find it. I got this, uh, uh this woup band it's an athletic flex yep

doing high rocks in december um this thing tracks everything and if you don't know what a whoop is

it just tracks your sleep optimize all the stuff you know and uh they got this new feature and it's like

your life expectancy so based on your habits how long you're going to live?

The problem with this is I have a seven week old and a two year old.

So every morning I wake up and it's like you got 12 years left to live if you keep sleeping at this rate.

And I just have me thinking in the current age and culture that we in, have you noticed that there is this desire, this pressure to optimize, to push, to grind, to succeed, to achieve?

And I am not against wisdom. I am not against, you know, being successful. I will say this. I think it's a disservice to the witness of Jesus Christ.

If you do something in the world, but you're not great at it.

I think we should be the very most excellent artists and creatives and busy people.

Like, don't come at me with that bad coffee from holy grounds or something like that.

I want good coffee.

I just think for us, we're in this culture, and this verse is so counter to what from the very age of for many of us

11, 10, 12 years old, we were taught. And it was get good grades, succeed, get to college. And again,

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