Eric Liddell: The Runner Who Gave Up Gold

Eric Liddell — Scottish Olympic runner who refused to compete on Sunday at the 1924 Paris Olympics. Take 5 daily devotional Episode 23.
06/19/2026|Rodney Coe|, ,

Pull up a chair. This is a story about a runner who refused to run.

The fastest man in Scotland was about to throw away the race of his life. The 1924 Olympics were in Paris, and Eric Liddell was the favorite to win the 100 meters, the event he had trained for, the event that was supposed to make him a legend. Then the schedule came out. The heats fell on a Sunday. And Eric Liddell, who believed the Lord’s Day belonged to the Lord, quietly announced that he would not run.

The newspapers called him a fool. Some of his own countrymen called him a traitor. He did not budge an inch.

The Race He Was Not Supposed to Win

So Liddell did something nobody saw coming. He entered the 400 meters instead. A longer race. One he had hardly trained for. One the experts flatly said he could not win.

On the morning of the final, someone pressed a folded note into his hand. It carried an old promise from Scripture. “Those who honor Me I will honor.”

He closed it in his fist and stepped to the line. And when the gun cracked, Eric Liddell ran like a man with nothing left to protect.

He won.

Gold medal. World record. The man who refused to run on Sunday outran the entire field the rest of the week.

The Bigger Race

That alone would make a fine story. But the medal is not the reveal. Here is the reveal.

Eric Liddell walked away from his fame at the very height of it. He had been born in China to missionary parents, and he felt God calling him back there. So he went. He spent the rest of his short life teaching and preaching in China while the world slid into war.

When the Japanese invaded, Liddell was captured and thrown into an internment camp. The conditions were brutal. And in that camp the Olympic champion became the man who carried water for the sick, organized races for the children, and gave away his own rations so that others could eat.

He died there in 1945, of a brain tumor, at forty-three years old. He never saw home again.

The last words anyone heard him say were these. “It’s complete surrender.” That was Eric Liddell’s whole life in three words.

For Your Heart Today

We spend so much of ourselves protecting our plans. Our reputation. Our sure thing. And here is a man who let go of all of it, and somehow ended up holding more than he ever gave up.

The writer of Hebrews tells us to “lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus.”

Notice he does not say run the race you picked out for yourself. He says run the one set before you. Liddell’s race was never the one he trained for. It was the one God set out in front of him.

And Jesus said it plainly. “Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you.” Liddell sought first. He lost a race and gained a calling. He let go of his comfort and gained a crown that will never rust.

And that, friend, is how God lifts up your day.

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