Adventurer and survival expert Bear Grylls has abseiled down sheer rock faces, fought through dense jungles and crossed scorching deserts. He has stood unflinching in front of world leaders, yet nothing, he says, tested him like writing a book about Jesus.

“It’s been the hardest thing I’ve ever done but also the best thing,” Grylls said about writing his new book: “The Greatest Story Ever Told.”

Published just this month, Grylls’ work shot straight to No. 1 on the Sunday Times bestseller list.

The book was born in the most unlikely of writers’ retreats: a rain-lashed jungle camp during a month-long Netflix shoot with his eldest son. After the crew went to bed, Grylls began scribbling in a notebook by head-torch. What started as a private exercise quickly became an all-night ritual.

Determined to let Scripture speak for itself, Grylls teamed up with theological advisers from the series The Chosen. Every line of dialogue attributed to Jesus is lifted verbatim from the Bible. “I didn’t want to change a single word He said,” Grylls stated, “not even a comma.” Months of meticulous revision followed, with scholars checking every detail for accuracy.

The man who normally trusts ropes, rivers and instinct found himself learning a new kind of discipline: slowing down and leaving ancient words untouched.

The Prayer That Went Viral

Grylls’s faith has occasionally broken through on screen despite editors’ best efforts to trim spiritual references. The turning point came in 2015 when he filmed Running Wild with then-President Barack Obama. At the end of the shoot, off camera, Grylls quietly offered to pray. The moment was meant to stay private, but it was leaked and went viral.

Years later, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi greeted Grylls by referencing the Obama prayer and suggested they pray together, too. Grylls insists he never orchestrated any of it.

365 Reasons Not To Fear

Now, after months steeped in Scripture, one statistic has lodged itself in the former SAS man’s mind: the Bible contains 365 separate encouragements not to be afraid, one for every day of the year. “I’m a soldier,” Grylls said. “I try to take that to heart.”

Having read his book aloud in prisons and hospitals and watched hardened inmates and terminally ill patients react with the same mixture of surprise and wonder, he is convinced the story still connects. “The same words, told plainly, become a point of connection rather than division,” he said. “That feels like its own kind of miracle.”

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