This year is the 100th anniversary of Eric Liddell’s 1924 gold medal performance in the Paris Olympics, later memorialized in the 1981 Academy Award winning movie, Chariots of Fire.
There are a number of memorable lines in the movie but none better than when Liddell is explaining to his sister why he must temporarily put off the mission field to participate in the olympics:
God made me fast. And when I run, I feel His pleasure.
Chariots of Fire (1981)
The thing is, apparently Eric Liddell never said this. These are the words of screenwriter Colin Welland. There’s not much about Welland’s religious beliefs on the internet. He was married though for 53 years before his death from Alzheimers, which is a good indication of something more at his core than secular humanism.
Still, I believe the line above was truly inspired by the Holy Spirit. It captures better than just about any single statement I have heard two components of God-inspired work.
The first is the teleological component: “God made me fast.” It’s unstated implication is inescapable: “Therefore He made me to run.” It was the implicit argument in what Liddell (fictionally) says to his sister in Chariots of Fire to explain why he should run, and it is a sound one.
For You formed my inward parts;
Psalm 139:13
You wove me in my mother’s womb.
If we believe David’s statement in Psalm 139, we must also believe God’s forming of our parts purposively.
The second component is pneumatological: “And when I run, I feel His pleasure.” I experience God’s affirming presence as I do what He created me to do. Such is fitting. Why should we expect not to feel His pleasure when we do what is pleasing to Him, and what can be more pleasing to Him than doing what He created us to do?
Part of the profundity of the statement was that it was not applied to Liddell’s missionary work or even sharing the gospel to those who watched him run but to his running. There was no dualism here. Quite the opposite. I can feel God’s pleasure in the work He has called me to, even if that work is not ministry work.
None of what I have written here was the primary message of Chariots of Fire. I suspect Welland may actually have written the line to exemplify how Liddell’s faith manifested in his life. But what Welland intended matters little; what God intended matters all. And I believe the line can used as an insightful tool when we apply it honestly to our own lives.
For example, I have always been a very hard worker. I’m usually the last to leave the office in the evening. I can sometimes work for hours, and it seems to me like a few minutes. I take no credit for this; it’s how God made me. And few things make me feel better than putting in a good hard days’ work. Working hard makes feel clean. I sometimes joke that it makes me feel saved.
God made me to work hard. And when I work hard, I feel His pleasure
GS
What did God create you to do?
Do it, and see if you don’t feel His pleasure. GS