Onward, Christian soldier
In a journey as bruising as any battlefield, former SAS soldier Kevin Stewart has swapped covert operations for the pulpit, convinced that the same hand that spared him in Bagram is now steering his life towards ministry.
He never grew up religious. Church was not part of his family life in north Scotland.
But everything changed on a dusty road in early-2000s Afghanistan when a truck packed “to the brim with enough explosives to flatten the whole area” ploughed into his patrol.
“I can only put it down to divine intervention that it didn’t blow,” Stewart told The Daily Telegraph.
“I believe that with all my heart. I cheated death because God had a use for me.”
In the stunned hours after the near - miss, a line from Psalm 23 circled his mind: “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.”
Stewart joined the army at 16, chasing adventure and “a sense of duty… a feeling I wanted to be part of something bigger”.
Tours in Northern Ireland followed, then Afghanistan, where the grim toll of IEDs and suicide bombings marked him deeply.
Life after leaving the military in 2006 looked glossy – big earnings, luxury cars, body-building titles in the Highlands – but the darkness he was trying to outrun caught up with him.
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