The Wilderness Is the Way

Part 1 of a 5-part series on faith, grit, and the strength of character that only comes through hardship.

I’ve spent a lot of my life in wild places. Jungles, mountains, deserts, open ocean. And for years, people have asked me some version of the same question: “What’s the worst thing that’s ever happened to you out there?”

But honestly? The wild has never been the hardest terrain I’ve had to cross.

The hardest terrain is the stuff that hits when you’re back home. The seasons where a business is facing huge battles and you can’t see a way through. The days where you feel you have let down those you love the most. The mornings where you wake up and the faith that once felt rock solid now feels paper thin.

Those are the real wildernesses. And here’s what I’ve come to believe, deeply and quietly, over many years:

God does His deepest work in the wilderness.

Storms Aren’t Mistakes. They’re Life.

We’ve been sold a lie. A quiet, comfortable, well-packaged lie. It goes something like this: If you do everything right — work hard, stay faithful, make good choices — everything will work itself out.

But that’s not how life always works.

The storms aren’t a sign that something has gone wrong. They’re not a test you pass and then move on from for ever. They’re not punishment for some failure you can’t quite identify.

They’re just... life.

The Bible is full of wilderness. Moses spent forty years in the desert before he was ready to lead. David was hunted through caves before he became king. Jesus Himself was led by the Spirit into the wilderness before His ministry even began. Not dragged there. Led there.

That’s always struck me. The wilderness wasn’t a detour. It was the route.

And if we can get hold of that it changes everything. It means we can stop asking “why is this happening to me?” and start asking “what is being built in me?”

The Truth the Wild Forces You to Face

Someone wrote in our subscriber chat recently: “I’m here for the stories, but I’m even more here for the truth under pressure. The internal kind. The kind people avoid for years because life stays comfortable enough.”

That’s it. That’s the thing.

The wilderness, whether it’s a sheer mountain or a season of grief or a career that’s fallen apart; strips away the noise. It removes the stuff we hide behind. The job title. The busy schedule. The Instagram version of our lives. And it leaves us standing there, exposed, with one very simple question:

Who are you when there’s nothing left to perform?

When I joined the SAS at 19 I was quickly taught that the bravado and the toughness I thought I had were actually pretty thin. That underneath all of it, I was just an average guy who was scared and tired and desperately needed something bigger than himself to hold on to.

And that was the beginning of everything real in my life.

Because the moment you stop pretending you’ve got it all together is the moment grace actually has room to work. It’s the moment where faith stops being a theory and becomes a lifeline. I’ve found that God is closest not when we’ve got it all figured out, but when we’ve finally run out of our own answers.

One of my favourite bible verses is this: ‘you’re blessed when you’re at the end of your rope. With less of you, there is more of God.’

But here’s the thing I’ve had to learn the hard way, and I’m still learning it. It’s easy to turn to God when you’ve hit the wall. When the options have run out and the fear is real and you’ve got nowhere else to go. Most of us find faith pretty quickly when we’re dangling off the edge. That’s not wisdom. That’s desperation. And God meets us there, of course He does, but that’s not the point.

The smarter, humbler, braver thing is to be present with God when everything’s going well. When the business is flying. When the family’s healthy. When you’re not in crisis. That’s so much harder. Because when life is good, we quietly start to believe we don’t need Him.

The people I’ve met who carry real peace have learnt to hold their faith close in the good seasons as well as the hard ones. They don’t just cry out to God when the rope snaps. They walk with Him when the trail is smooth and the sun is shining. And because of that, when the storm does come, and it always comes, they’re not scrambling to find their footing. They’re already anchored.

The Escape Hatches We Build

Most people’s lives aren’t easy. Far from it. People are carrying real weight, financial pressure, broken relationships, health battles, grief, loneliness. Life is hard for most of us, most of the time.

But here’s the trap. Instead of walking through the hard stuff, we’ve built a thousand small escape hatches to avoid sitting in it. The scrolling at midnight when we can’t sleep. The busyness we wear like armour so we never have to be still. The noise we fill every silence with. The bottle. The box set. The endless doing.

We don’t lack hardship. We lack the willingness to be present with it.

And that’s the real comfort trap. Not luxury. Not wealth. Avoidance. Numbing. Staying one step ahead of the thing we don’t want to feel.

In the wild, you can’t do that. You can’t scroll your way out of a storm. You can’t distract yourself off a cliff face. The cold is real. The hunger is real. The fear is real. And you have to move through it rather than around it.

That’s why the wilderness changes people. It strips away every escape hatch and leaves you with nowhere to hide. And in that raw, honest, uncomfortable place, something starts to grow. Something that all the numbing in the world could never build.

I think a lot of us know this deep down. We know the scrolling isn’t helping. We know the busyness is a mask. We know we’re running. The question is whether we’re brave enough to stop. To be present.

Get Outside.

Nature heals. In a real, measurable, you-can-feel-it-in-your-bones way. The science backs it up, time outdoors lowers stress hormones, sharpens focus, lifts mood, strengthens your immune system. But you don’t need a study to tell you what you already know. Go stand in a forest for twenty minutes and tell me you don’t feel different.

I’ve seen it on every expedition. People arrive wound tight, stressed, overthinking, carrying the weight of whatever’s going on back home. And within a day or two of being outside, sleeping rough, moving through wild terrain, something shifts. The shoulders drop. The eyes soften. The real person starts to show up.

Nature reminds us that we’re small. And that being small is okay. When you’re on a ridge at dawn, or sitting by a river with nothing but the sound of water, the stuff that felt enormous an hour ago starts to shrink. You remember that you’re part of something vast and beautiful and way beyond your control. And honestly? That’s a relief.

In a world of screens and noise and constant comparison, most of us are starving for that. We just don’t know it until we step outside.

So if you’re feeling lost or overwhelmed or disconnected start simple. Get outdoors. Walk. Breathe. Look up. You don’t need a mountain, a park will do!

On Friendship, Family, and Keeping It Real…The People Who Matter Most

Someone asked in our subscriber chat how Shara and I keep things grounded, how we find real friendship and protect what really matters. It’s a great question.

Shara is steady. But we both need to be. A great marriage is 1+1 =3. We stand side by side and face the storms. We help each other be our best and be stronger.

What we’ve learnt, slowly, and usually the hard way, is that you have to protect the things that matter most. Not with aggression. With intention. That means saying no to things that look great on paper but would cost you time with your kids. It means guarding your weekends like they’re sacred, because they are. It means being honest about your limits rather than pretending you can do it all.

Real friendship is the same. Someone asked whether we have people around us who know us for us, not for what we do or what we could offer them. The answer is yes. But it’s a small circle. Not because we’re guarded, but because that kind of friendship costs something. It costs time. It costs honesty. It means letting people see you on the days when you’re not coping, not performing, not impressive. Most find that terrifying.

But the friendships that have lasted, the ones that actually hold weight, they’re all built on that. People who’ve seen the mess and stayed. People who don’t need you to be anything other than who you are. That’s gold. And it’s worth protecting fiercely.

And then there’s the children. I won’t pretend to have this figured out. Raising a family is its own wilderness, beautiful and humbling and completely unpredictable. All I know is that they don’t need a perfect dad. They need a kind, loyal one. One who might get things wrong, but he says sorry, and keeps pointing them towards the things that last. Shara and I try to do that together. Some weeks we manage it. Some weeks we don’t. But we never stop trying.

If any of that resonates with where you are, if you’re in a season of juggling and dropping things and wondering if you’re doing enough, the fact that you care means you’re already doing more than you think. Keep showing up. Keep protecting what matters.

Strength Without Ego

One more thing before we wrap up this first part.

There’s a version of strength that the world celebrates, loud, dominant, self-made, untouchable. It looks impressive. But it’s brittle.

The strength that actually lasts, the kind that holds a family together, that leads a team through crisis, that endures when the recognition dries up, that’s a different thing entirely. It’s strength that knows its own limits. Strength that’s been tested, forged and strengthened. Strength that doesn’t need to announce itself.

I think that’s what the wilderness produces, if we let it.

Not harder people. But humbler, tougher people.

People who’ve learnt that they can’t do this alone. People who’ve discovered that surrender isn’t weakness… it’s the bravest thing you’ll ever do. People who lead not because they have all the answers, but because they’ve been honest about not having them.

That’s the kind of person I want to be.

The Invitation

So here’s what I want to leave you with.

If you’re in a wilderness right now, if life feels hard and uncertain and nothing like the plan you had in mind. I want you to know: this is not wasted ground.

This is where character gets forged.

This is where strength is built.

Where the real stuff comes from. Not the CV stuff. Not the social media stuff. The soul stuff. The things that will still be standing when everything else falls away.

Don’t run from it. Don’t numb it. Don’t let anyone tell you that struggle means you’ve failed.

The wilderness is not punishment. It is life. And if we have the courage to walk through it, together, honestly, with open hands, we’ll come out the other side with something that comfort could never give us.

Stay wild. Stay humble. Stay close to the fire.

And Never Give Up!

See you next week for Part 2: Obedience Before Outcome.

BG

Coming up in this series:

Part 2: Obedience Before Outcome — Doing the right thing when you can’t see where it leads.

Part 3: When the Rope Snaps — What you find out about yourself when the thing you were counting on gives way. And what to do!

Part 4: Surrender the Controls — The daily fight to stop white-knuckling your life.

Part 5: What Remains — Strip away the title, the money, the reputation. What’s left? Who’s the real you?