What would be the epiphany that would cause you to start living life differently – with Christ at the center? For Brandon Young, a former Army Ranger, it happened while running with a team of 20 in the Mt. Evans Ascent to the 14,265 foot summit. With only 2 miles to the finish line he realized, “I don’t want to run anymore”. That wasn’t just for the 2 remaining miles, that was a more profound shift for how he would live the rest of his life. In, Perseverance > Endurance, Brandon describes the lifestyle shift, “I stopped running. And I started walking… and I started growing. I adjusted how I got there, not where I got. Endurance is a wonderful tactic to help us survive, but perseverance allows us us to thrive.”
TURN THE PAGE IN LIFE BY HAVING PURPOSE IN GOD
Coauthor and former Green Beret Blayne Smith, had a different experience but one that nonetheless led him to the work he and Brandon are now doing: Applied Leadership Partners. They guide leaders to apply effective leadership practices that build closely-knit, high-performing teams to excel in a complex world.
Blayne describes his journey saying, “I spent much of my first two years out of the Army in a deep valley. I had lost my sense of purpose.” His marriage ended. He got a second chance though to “do things right” marrying his wife Jeni. As he describes it, he was seeing more clearly and living a truly integrated life that felt full and sustainable – solid and steady. But his ambitious drive and hurried lifestyle was something he knew he couldn’t sustain.
Walking one evening with his daughter eating ice cream on a Florida beach town sidewalk he instinctively rushed her to get going. That was until a homeless man called out to him saying, “You should learn to enjoy going at her pace.” That’s what God used to help him realize, “I had always lived life at my pace. I pushed the pace. I was relentless in my pursuit of the tings that mattered to me.”
Blayne and Brandon are featured on the Summer 2025 cover of Shout! OUTDOOR LIFESTYLE MAGAZINE.
Their book PERSEVERANCE > ENDURANCE can help you to grow in perseverance. Get a copy for yourself and a friend or order several copies so your outdoor group can read and discuss it together.
WHAT MATTERS TO GOD
We talked with both Blayne and Brandon because it’s important for all of us to learn about what matters to God and be ever mindful of that as we pursue, explore and celebrate life outdoors.
Your passion for being outdoors will no doubt at some point or another influence others. That’s leadership. It may be leading just one other person, a small group an entire team or any number of other people. You may do that casually with a friend, serving in an outdoor ministry capacity or even do it professionally.
There are countless books, trainings and models for leadership. But, if you’re going to lead, whether that’s in the outdoors, at work, in your family or however, it’s done best when you do it with biblical wisdom – the way God wants it done. Great leaders fear God, have integrity and are incorruptable. The concept of servant leadership doesn’t just come from the Bible – it is how Jesus Christ led.
The Gospel of Christ is powerfully counter-culture to many of the traditional outdoor adventure mindsets that:
- pursue the thrill at all costs
- promote pride in self-mastery and self-accomplishment
- control your own destiny and outcomes
- elevate courage often over wisdom and certainly over humility and faith
- fuel an insatiable lust for more
The 5 factors of perseverance that Blayne and Brandon offer as being key to leadership can help you to experience the outdoors – with Christ at the center and help you to guide others to embrace what matters to God.
5 FACTORS OF PERSEVERANCE
CHANGE – Things come at you fast and often, and often without warning. They are the factors that are outside of our control. Outdoor circumstances and experiences often do a great job of illustrating change. Imagine hiking on a well traveled, marked and mapped trail in high elevations and then you get to a point where the snow totally covers the trail. That is the change you weren’t expecting.
UNCERTAINTY – We are confronted with situations beyond our training or capabilities. These are the times when you ask, “Am I enough for this? Am I trained for this. Do I know enough for this?” We may call it being nervous or anxious but it is fear that rests at the bottom of uncertainty. Fear is the friction that holds us in place. Purpose or pain are the 2 things that will make us move. We’ll either run toward our purpose or run from our pain. The uncertainty on the trail is when your confronted with what you should do when what you’re supposed to do isn’t readily obvious.
ACCEPTANCE – God-given perseverance empowers us to accept the consequences, embrace the reality of the situation, and surrender what we can’t control. You have to let go of what you can not control. This is key to leadership and in fact key to the faith journey. It’s not just a matter of surrendering, it’s a matter of surrendering in the right direction. On the snow covered trail you’ll have to accept that you can’t see it, that you’ll need to terrain associate.
With acceptance you learn to take the longer view. God doesn’t give you what you want. God gives you what you need. Sometimes when you’re on a trail that presents problems and challenges you can’t overcome, there’s something you need to accept: even though you’ve gone the distance it’s time to back track and find a different route. Sometimes the best route to get to where you want to go is to go back the way you came. We have to accept things for what they truly are and not what we wish they would be. No one likes to “surrender”. We fear that means we condone it or are giving up our agency. BUT, in fact it’s just the opposite: When you accept a situation for what it is and surrender things that are outside of your control then you have total agency because you can take full ownership of things that are in your control and do your very best.
CHOICE – Choose to become your creeds, values and ethos – all the things that we say we are in life. There’s a big difference between looking at the decisions you could make and making choices. Actually choosing to pursue that happens more than just once. You have to make the choice over and over and over again. That is, “the walk” in the ways of Christ. It is the sanctification process. Become the person the team and situation call for. Challenging trail situations call you to get out your tools, your compass, look for the peak where your headed and consistently going and settling in.
GROWTH – You will emerge changed on the other side of perseverance. You will not be the same person who started at the beginning of that journey when all that change and uncertainty rocked you. You will become more wise. You’ll understand how to truly persevere. And guess what, you have to do it again. Once you achieve your summit, your destination on a snowy trail you can celebrate, thank God and experience the pay off, the growth of going through difficulties. You start to see the character, love and faithfulness of God – the nature of God!
HOW HAVE YOU APPLIED THE 5 FACTORS OF PERSEVERANCE?
We’d like to hear from you. Use the form below to share your outdoor story of perseverance. Describe how you tapped into 1 or more of the 5 factors. What was it like and how did you grow in Christ?
