Running to Feel His Pleasure

In the 1981 film Chariots of Fire, there is a moment that has quietly shaped how an entire generation thinks about calling. Eric Liddell, the Scottish sprinter and missionary, stands with his sister Jenny, who is frustrated that he has delayed returning to the mission field in China. She believes running is a distraction from his real purpose. Eric listens patiently, then says something extraordinary: "I believe God made me for a purpose — but He also made me fast. And when I run, I feel His pleasure."

That single line carries a theology most of us spend a lifetime trying to learn. Eric did not see his gift as separate from his calling. He understood that the Almighty does not waste what He builds into us. The speed in his legs and the fire in his soul for missions were not competing loyalties — they were two expressions of the same divine design.

Many of us live as though our deepest joys and our highest duties must be at war with each other. We assume that what comes naturally to us cannot possibly be what God wants from us. But what if the thing that makes you come alive is not a detour from your purpose but the very road toward it?

Eric Liddell did go to China. He served faithfully and died there. But he ran first — and in the running, he showed the world what it looks like when a human being steps into exactly what they were made for.

Your purpose is not hiding from you. It may already be the thing that makes you feel His pleasure.