Made For A Purpose

I have always loved this line from the movie Chariots of Fire, "I believe that God made me for a purpose, but He also made me fast. When I run, I feel His pleasure."
This was Eric Liddell trying to console his distraught sister Jennie (who feared her brother had become negligent regarding his “calling” to be a missionary to China), and yet wanting her to see a much bigger picture of who God is right then, right there in his participation of the 1924 Paris Olympics.

What I am surmising is only conjecture and yet I do not see it being so far removed from the truth of this same God and Father that Eric was discovering while he was likewise being drawn ever deeper into knowing whose he was.
From what I can detect, Eric was living and walking in a knowing of whose he was, the security of that unconditional love freed him to allow Christ in him to supernaturally naturally express himself as Eric, and that was going to be done there at the Paris Olympics no more or less than when he eventually arrived in China as a missionary.

I believe Eric’s involvement as a runner before, during and after the 1924 Paris Olympics was only a natural metaphor or expression of something far grandeur in scope, “Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize.” As his and our sibling in Christ, Paul said, “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith,”
This is a race to the finish, fighting the good fight of faith (trust) in the one who has called us to be His!

What unimaginable delight and pleasure must cause our God and Father’s heart to do cartwheels as we discover His delight and rapturous joy in what he has made fully available to us? When we begin to tap into, discover the purpose he made us for was for him alone, there is poured into that moment a series of continued moments of delight our minds can not keep up with.

I want to close this by saying, this world is “filled with guns and war” to quote an old song by Larry Norman, and if this mystery of Christ IN us is not broken down to us and for us right where we are, live, and folks there are some nightmare dark and putrefying shit holes in this world, then it is a gospel, a message that only works for a few good people.
Joseph’s world of shattered dreams and illusions while still incarcerated discovered a reality that defied human reasoning; his prison became a palace only because of His living presence!

Rich