“I believe God made me for a purpose, but He also made me fast! And when I run, I feel His pleasure.”

Eric Liddell

“Don’t worry about locating your purpose if you are seeking after God, because your purpose will locate you.”

Tony Evans

 

My sweet spot in life is that place of purpose where I have been able to use what I am gifted with and love to do, for God’s glory while also impacting others. It has been such an amazing place to be.

My purpose first started “locating” me back in high school, when Coach Z challenged me to be a good steward of my abilities. God had made me an athlete and given me a passion to play, but I wasn’t exercising it.

Coach Z was right, and that conversation changed my trajectory and set me on the endurance sport path as a runner. Quickly, I tasted the level of talent in me and fell in love with running. But then, almost as quickly, I went through six years of being athletically broken.

During that time, I was challenged to surrender my passion and my dreams. It made no sense, but it was a necessary reset. Through that process, my order of operations was fixed. God’s grace became sufficient. In Christ—not sports—I had all that I needed.

That priority shift changed everything.

I stopped chasing the plans and started chasing the One with the plans. That’s when my purpose found me. The One who made me and knew what I was made for, brought my abilities and passions into alignment.

In graduate school, everything I had surrendered four years earlier as a runner was resurrected through cycling. As I risked obeying Him and moved in faith, the opportunities followed. And what a “beyond all we can ask or think” (Ephesians 3:20) journey it has been!

For the last 20+ years, the Lord has used cycling—including three Olympics, seventeen World Championships, and countless mundane “just do it” days as the vessel to work in me, while at the same time using my legs, lungs, and opportunities to praise and glorify Him.

It’s been a special place of purpose.

Doing what I was made to do for the reason I was made to do it.

I honestly don’t know how the next year will unfold, or how exactly I will be using my abilities, but my tactics will be the same. Chase the ONE with the plan. Then do my absolute best with what I have.

In cycling, I have an opportunity to compete in the new Lifetime Grand Prix series. Off the bike, I hope to use my spiritual abilities and what I know as an Olympic athlete to go into all my world and help make spiritual athletes.

As Oswald Chambers said, “My determined purposed is to be my utmost for His highest—my best for His glory. To reach that level of determination is a matter of the will, not of debate or of reasoning.”

What does “my best for His glory” look like for you?

Whatever it is that you do, know that you are God’s workmanship. Loved and made for a purpose! There are no “justs” or “onlys” with God. In His hands, it’s availability and not capability.

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“For I know the plans I have for you,” says the Lord. “They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope. In those days when you pray, I will listen. If you look for Me wholeheartedly, you will find Me.” – Jeremiah 29:11-13

“Do not remember the past events; pay no attention to things of old. Look, I am about to do something new; even now, it is coming. Do you not see it?” – Isaiah 43:18