GET OFF THE SIDELINES 

Micah Smith 

Today's Scripture: "I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus." Philippians 3:14, ESV 

Theme: Press on and never give up on the goal of remaining faithful to God's calling. 

LOOKING ISN'T ENOUGH 

Near the end of The Aeronauts, after everything Amelia and James have been through — the storm, the impossible climb, the moments where survival itself was in question — Amelia delivers a line that stopped me cold: 

"You don't change the world simply by looking at it, but by the way you choose to live in it." 

It's the kind of sentence that sounds like a motivational poster but earns its weight in context. These two didn't observe the sky from a safe distance and write papers about it. They went up. They almost died. They came back with data no one had ever collected before. The difference between looking and living, in their case, was everything. 

THE QVC OUTLET AND KEEPING THE VOLUME LOW 

When I turned 32, I had been out of school and working for about ten years. And somewhere in that decade, I'd started feeling stuck. I was working in niche software, my skills felt hard to transfer, and I kept watching other people land the kind of opportunities I wanted — mobile development, interesting projects, roles with actual momentum. I was very good at being a spectator of other people's careers. 

On a drive home from vacation, my wife and I randomly stopped at a QVC outlet store — yes, that's a thing that existed — where they were selling returned and unsold merchandise at steep discounts. Buried in the shelves was a complete motivational speaker CD set. For those who need the translation: a CD like this was like a podcast, except you only got one episode, but you could listen to it as many times as you wanted. The whole set was ten dollars. 

I bought several — they were going for much more online, so it seemed like easy money. Except some of the sets were opened and missing discs, so I popped one in on the drive home. I kept the volume low, obviously, because I am waayy too cool for motivational speaker content. Except the content was actually really good... and it got me hooked. It talked about starting your day with an hour of power. 

So I started waking up an hour early to learn. I worked through every session, took notes, and once I’d finished the set, I used that time and intensity to focus on learning other things - web development, JavaScript, Java, Android apps. Pretty soon I went from watching other people get the opportunities I wanted to being someone who had actually built the skills to go after them myself. 

I stopped looking at the career I wanted and started living toward it. 

PRESSING ON ISN'T PASSIVE 

Paul's words in Philippians 3:14 — "I press on" — are easy to read past. But it's worth remembering where Paul was when he wrote them: prison. He wasn't pressing on from a place of comfort or momentum. He was pressing on from chains, writing to a church he couldn't visit, about a prize he hadn't yet reached. 

Pressing on costs something. It's not showing up to church, learning something true, and then living exactly the same way on Monday. James 1:22a, (ESV) puts it plainly: "Be doers of the word, not hearers only." 

The world doesn't change because we understand what needs to change. It changes because someone decided to live differently — one early morning, one new skill, one faithful step at a time. 

Make it Personal: Where in your life are you stuck in observation mode — watching, learning, intending, but not yet moving? What would it look like to “press on” this week, not when conditions are perfect, but right now, from exactly where you are? 

Pray: Father, forgive me for the times I've confused learning about You with actually following You. Help me be someone who presses on — not just in the good seasons, but in the hard ones too. Show me the one step I've been putting off and give me the courage to take it. In Jesus' Name, Amen. 

Read: Philippians 3:12-14, James 1:22-25 

Weekly Memory Verse: "Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us." Hebrews 12:1, ESV