The Fire That Won't Be Borrowed

In the 1981 film Chariots of Fire, there is a moment that stops you cold. Eric Liddell, the Scottish missionary and Olympic sprinter, is being pressed by his sister Jenny to abandon running and return immediately to the mission field in China. She believes athletics are a distraction from his true calling. Eric takes her hands, looks her in the eye, and says, "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 has echoed through decades because it names something we all long to understand: that our purpose is not a generic assignment handed down from heaven, but something woven into the specific shape of who we are. Liddell did go to China. He served faithfully and died in a Japanese internment camp in 1945. But he never treated his running as something separate from his devotion to the Almighty. He understood that the gifts El Shaddai places within us are not accidents to be apologized for — they are invitations to glorify Him.

Too many of us spend our lives borrowing someone else's calling because it looks more spiritual. But the Creator who formed you did not make a mistake. Your purpose lives at the intersection of what you do well and where you feel His pleasure. Run there.