By Charles Gardner —
World-renowned adventurer Bear Grylls has taken more risks than most in his extraordinary life, and that includes climbing Mt Everest.
At 23, the ex-SAS soldier was among the youngest ever to summit Everest, which he credits to the grace of God as well as his own sometimes reckless determination.
Now aged 50, he is a global icon in the field of endeavor which has included being figurehead to the world’s 28 million scouts and fronting audacious TV programs risking life and limb to demonstrate how to get out of trouble in the wild.
He was hardly known at the time of his Himalayan expedition, which nearly didn’t happen after a skydiving accident in which he broke his back in three places.
But somewhat miraculously, he recovered and was able to fulfill his dream of being on the very top of the world. Exhausted and scared stiff before his assault on the final section towards the 29,000 ft summit, he retrieved a piece of paper from his pack on which he had written these words from the Bible: “Even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall; but those who wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength. They shall mount up with wings like eagles. They shall run and not grow weary. They shall walk and not faint.” (Isaiah 40:29-31)
As he recorded in his autobiography Mud, Sweat and Tears¹, the last few thousand feet is literally like playing Russian roulette as statistics show that one-in-six die in the attempt.
On an earlier occasion lower down the mountain, when similarly anxious, he reached for a seashell picked from a beach on the Isle of Wight on which his then girlfriend (and now wife) Shara had written his favourite verse: “Be sure of this, that I am with you always, even unto the end of the earth.” (Matthew 28:20)
After his dreadful fall, when his parachute failed to open properly, and which required eight months in the hospital, it was his Christian faith that helped him recover. “It reminded me that, despite the pain and despair, I was held and loved and blessed – my life was secure through Jesus Christ. That gift of grace has been so powerful to me ever since.”
After his initial failure at SAS selection, one of his friends told him that: “So often, God’s callings have a birth, a death and then a resurrection.”
During the extremely tough SAS selection marches, he would find himself praying alongside his close buddy, quoting Isaiah again: “I am holding you by your right hand. Do not be afraid. I am here to help you.” (Isaiah 41:13)
Reflecting on Everest, he writes of friendships forged in a tough crucible and “a faith that sustained me through the good, the bad and the ugly”. A question he often got asked on his return was: ‘Did you find God on the mountain?’
“The real answer,” he writes, “is you don’t have to climb a big mountain to find faith.” But did God help him get there? Yes! “Every faltering step of the way.”
His climbing buddy Mick summed up the essence of such a tough but rewarding challenge as: “In the three months that I was away, I was both happier than ever before, and more scared than I ever hope to be again.”
One of Bear’s early motivational talks was in a hotel among the Drakensberg Mountains of South Africa. It was a bit of a disaster as the assembled businessmen had been plied with beer and spoke Afrikaans, so English was only their second language – and there was a power cut! But at least it provided some personal connection for me as I have scaled the 10,000 ft escarpment of this magnificent range in my far-off youth – nothing like the challenge of the Himalayas, but scary and exciting enough for a teenager.
It was at the same age – sixteen – that Bear first found “a quiet, but strong Christian faith” while at school at Eton. “It has provided me with a real anchor to my life and has been the secret strength to so many great adventures since.”
It came about when his godfather Stephen, like a second father to him, died suddenly of a heart attack in Johannesburg. “I was devastated. I remember sitting up a tree one night at school on my own, and praying the simplest, most heartfelt prayer of my life: ‘Please God, comfort me.’ Blow me down… he did.”
So when he later spent a wonderful weekend kissing (non-stop for 36 hours) a beautiful German girl with whom he even shared a bed, he made a point of explaining that it was because of his faith (and wanting to save himself for his future wife) that it didn’t go any further!
“Christ comes to make us free, to bring us life in all its fulness. He is there to forgive us where we have messed up (and who hasn’t), and to be the backbone in our being. Faith in Christ has been the great empowering presence in my life, helping me walk strong when so often I feel so weak.”
The Bear necessities of life, in other words!
If you want to know more about a personal relationship with God, go here
¹ Transworld Publishers (2011), Channel 4 Books & www.beargrylls.com, £12.99
