Bear Grylls has dangled from cliffs, plunged through jungles and deserts, and stood in front of presidents without blinking. None of it, he says, prepared him for the strain of writing a book about Jesus.
“It’s been the hardest thing I’ve ever done,” he said. “But also the best thing.”
His new book, The Greatest Story Ever Told, wasn’t something he planned or even expected. It arrived in the middle of a monthlong filming trip in the jungle, where he and his oldest son were shooting a Netflix series. One night after the crew turned in, he started writing. Then he kept writing. Soon it became a routine: long days on set, long nights hunched over a notebook while the rain soaked the canopy above.
For a week, the chapters poured out quickly — short scenes with the pacing of an adventure show. Grylls, who has always preferred straightforward, accessible storytelling, kept the structure simple: fast, lean, readable. The refining process came later. He partnered closely with theologians from The Chosen, making sure every detail aligned with Scripture and every word of Jesus’ dialogue was lifted directly from the Bible.
“I didn’t want to change a single word Jesus said,” he explained. “Not even a comma from the Bible of the words Jesus said.”
It became months of careful, reverent combing through the text with scholars who helped ground his instincts in theological clarity. The survivalist who had spent years trusting ropes, river currents and his own instincts found himself trusting something quieter: the discipline of slowing down and letting ancient words remain untouched.
The book arrived in the world as unexpectedly as it came to him. When it debuted at No. 1 on the Sunday Times bestseller list, Grylls mostly felt grateful — and a little startled. But the reaction reinforced something he’d been feeling for years on his shows, even when editors trimmed out the spiritual asides: people were hungry for something deeper than a survival trick.
Grylls talks about faith like someone who has needed it more than he has mastered it. He is upfront about doubt, almost eager to demystify his own belief.
“I have many doubts as well. I really do,” he said. “Faith and doubt are just two sides of the same coin.”
Writing the book forced him further into Scripture than any project he’s done. He read the New Testament three times before he started writing, trying to absorb the cadence of the story. What surprised him wasn’t the drama or the miracles but the ordinariness. Tending fires. Cooking fish. Walking. Laughing. The deep friendships and constant frayed nerves of the disciples, who he affectionately describes as a “rough gang of friends.”
“99 percent of their journey with Jesus, they were scared and full of doubts,” he says. “And that gives us all hope.”
That sense of human closeness is partly why Grylls connected so deeply with the creators of The Chosen. Their shared instinct — to present Christ not as an icon but as a person — made their collaboration on the upcoming wilderness docuseries Chosen in the Wild feel almost inevitable. For Grylls, it was a surreal merging of his worlds: a wilderness expedition with the actors who portray the figures he’d just spent months writing about. He jokes about resisting the urge to tease Jonathan Roumie, who plays Jesus.
“I told him, ‘I’ll use a canoe across the lake; you can walk,’” he said.
But behind the humor was something real. Meeting Roumie and others off-camera exposed sides of them rarely seen in the show’s global following. For Grylls, their humility and sincerity added another layer to the story he was already trying to tell.
There’s a similar simplicity in the way he remembers the first time his own faith became unmistakably public. Early survival shows occasionally caught small moments — a prayer at night, a few words of gratitude before a climb — but networks often cut them. Nothing changed until he filmed Running Wild with then-President Barack Obama. At the end of the journey, away from the cameras, Grylls offered to pray for him. It was meant to be private. It wasn’t.
That moment followed him into other episodes and other countries. When he later filmed with India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the leader greeted him by referencing the Obama prayer and suggested they pray as well. Grylls didn’t try to orchestrate any of it. It simply unfolded.
“Maybe people feel that spirit more and more,” he says.
His sense of calling isn’t heroic or dramatic. It’s almost matter-of-fact: if he’s going to stand for something, it might as well be the thing he believes is truest.
“You’re being asked to stand up and be a character witness and an ambassador in your life for the Prince of Peace,” he says. “What an honor.”
The message he’s trying to communicate — in the book, in the show and everywhere else — is that Jesus is less distant and more startlingly alive than many people realize. And that closeness, more than anything else, is what changed the lives of the first disciples and continues to change his.
“Why did just regular people flock to Him? Why did the religious elite fear Him?” Grylls asks. “Spend time with Him because it’s not the story you expect.”
He’s read the book aloud in prisons and hospitals, and the reactions are always similar: surprise, curiosity, recognition, wonder. The same story, told cleanly and plainly, becomes a point of connection instead of division. To Grylls, that feels like its own kind of miracle.
“He’s calling us all home,” he says.
For someone who has built a life on navigating the wilderness, Grylls seems more interested now in what it takes to navigate the inner terrain — the doubts, the fear, the questions about strength and meaning. He returns often to one detail he learned in his months of rereading Scripture, something that settled into him the way survival instincts do: 365 moments in the Bible where God says not to be afraid.
“I’m a soldier,” he says. “I try and take that to heart.”
And with that, the world’s most famous survivalist returns to the reason he wrote a story he never expected to write: not because he wanted a new project, but because he found a truth he couldn’t keep quiet.
“It’s only just beginning,” he says.
Watch our conversation with Bear Grylls on The RELEVANT Podcast Impact Series, presented by World Vision. or listen here:
