Jesus Storybook Bible

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Australian singer/songwriter Nathan Tasker shares how his family practices gratitude throughout the year, especially at Thanksgiving, how he’s been touched by profound friendships in his life, and what he’s learned about honesty in the way we present ourselves to God. I would urge not just families with young children to get this book, but every Christian--from pew warmers, to ministry leaders, seminarians and even theologians! Sally Lloyd-Jones has captured the heart of what it means to find Christ in all the scriptures, and has made clear even to little children that all God's revelation has been about Jesus from the beginning--a truth not all that commonly recognized even among the very learned.' Dr. Timothy Keller Jago is an accomplished illustrator with several prestigious awards to his credit, including a Macmillian "Highly Commended" Award for Children's Illustration in 2003, an AOI Silver Award in 2004, and the National Literacy Association Wow! Award. Jago lives in Cornwall with his wife and daughter. Of course, she's not old enough to grasp what "God loves you" really means, and by the time she is, that's where we can come in with 100% of the infallible gospel message.

Naturally I chose Samson, because I thought he would be fun to play. But when I reread the story through the lens of how I would tell it to children, I didn’t know what to leave in and what to take out. Could I tell them about the time I tied the tails of foxes together, set them on fire, and sent them running through the Philistines’ vineyards? Or the time, after spending the night in a brothel, I tore the city gates from their hinges and carried them off? And I thought, Oh, this is a bit different,” she said. The book caught fire gradually, by word of mouth as “fathers or pastors who really loved its robust theology were recommending it.” The book “emphasizes the primacy of God’s love in an imbalanced manner,” New Testament professor Charles Lee Irons wrote. “[B]y completely avoiding God’s judgment and by putting a deliberate emphasis on God’s love for his children ‘no matter what,’ Lloyd-Jones distorts the character of God in a way that, in the end, makes it logically impossible to believe that he is a God of holiness, wrath, or judgment.” The Jesus Storybook Bible: Every Story Whispers His Name disproves the adage that you can’t judge a book by its cover. It’s the weight given to God’s love that has caused the relatively small amount of criticism for The Jesus Storybook Bible.

I LOVE to give people The Jesus Storybook Bible because from the very first chapter it paints a powerful picture of God’s epic love for each one of us. Sally Lloyd-Jones has a unique way of inviting the reader, young or old, to dive in and discover for themselves the truth and hope of the greatest story ever told.” – Amy Grant Experience what the excitement is about! Based on the award-winning Jesus Storybook Bible, the Jesus Storybook Bible Curriculum Kit is great for both Sunday School and homeschool use, geared towards kids ages 4-7. But you know what? The JSB is a storybook and should be treated as such. My dad had been reading the Holy Bible with us kids every day, my sister included, and she had been in the routine with us for several months before I bought her this book. Jago the illustrator, and Sally Lloyd-Jones (no relation to Martyn) the author, are a good pair. She brings the same creativity and sense of humor to her telling of the Bible’s stories.

I see kids who are virtually illiterate carrying your Bible around the school grounds every day and reading it every time they get a chance. Some of them had read it all the way through within a week of receiving it. Some of the older girls in the boarding house read it together with the younger girls every night before they go to bed. They come to school and love to tell me what they’ve been reading about and where they’re up to. You might’ve seen SuperChef Darnell Ferguson on Food Network, hosting, guest starring, and even cooking in the Beijing Olympics, dazzling people with his culinary abilities. But Darnell didn’t always know he wanted to be a chef, in fact it wasn’t until a teacher spoke life into him and he found an unexpected home in the church, that he realized God had given him this “superpower” to be a force for good in the lives of other kids who might have the same love for cooking, too.The Jesus Storybook Bible says it all: The Scriptures are not merely a collection of stories designed to teach moral lessons. As Jesus explained to the men walking the road to Emmaus on Resurrection Sunday, the whole Bible is about Jesus. In the words of the subtitle, every story whispers his name. One of Lloyd-Jones’s best-known lines from the book is the repeateddescription of God’s“never ending, never giving up, unbreaking, always and forever love.”

When I was 6, I went to a Sunday school where I got the idea that it was all rules and coloring inside the lines,” she said. “I hated it. I remember walking to church holding my dad’s hand, and from the outside we looked lovely, but inside I was making a vow that when I grew up, I was never going to church again.”

On the upside, the JSB portrays God's stories in the Bible as if they really happened, which is awesome. But Lloyd-Jones’s writing isn’t cutesy. She has a grasp of the profound. How does one explain to a child the agony of Jesus in Gethsemane, and his prayer of surrender to his Father? Lloyd-Jones does it as well as any biblical commentator: If the Bible tells you all the things you have to do right, and I’m not doing it right, God can’t be pleased with me,” Lloyd-Jones explains her 6-year-old reasoning. “When I go to churches and schools and say, ‘How many people here think you have to be good for God to love you?’ they’re raising their hands. These are children who know the Bible stories.” This critical perspective is missing from so much of the evangelical church. I remember as a young pastor being asked by the director of children’s ministries in our church to help out in vacation Bible school by dressing up like an Old Testament character and telling the kids my story.

If you want to engage with your kids and you want to engage with your teens, it's best practice to create spaces and meet kids and teens where they are.” - Melina Luna Smith In Jeremiah 29:11, God reminds us that He has extraordinary plans for each and every one of us. Often, it can be easy to get anxious when we think about the future and the unknown, but it’s important for us to trust God—His timing and plans are greater than we can imagine. Singer and songwriter Melanie Penn opens up about insecurities she has faced throughout her career and how staying rooted in her faith has always gotten her through the unknown. Then, about five years ago, a director at Zondervan told Lloyd-Jones he was sorry for the resistance they put up. “He said, ‘I need to apologize to you, because you knew what we had before we did,’” Lloyd-Jones said. “I thought that was an incredible thing. I don’t know any publishers who do that.” Lloyd-Jones is firm: “You have to know you’re loved first. Rules don’t have the power to change your heart; God’s love does.” For Children and AdultsThat voice allowed her to put in quirky lines. For example, after God confused the languages at the Tower of Babel, Lloyd-Jones wrote, “You could be saying something like ‘Such a lovely morning!’ and then get a punch in the nose because they thought you said, ‘Hush up, you’re boring!’” The key to introducing children to a life long faith is the same as the key that opens the door to a lifelong love of reading. And the key is called sharing. Of course you can’t make children find faith just as you can’t make them read something they don’t want too – well, not and expect them to love it. My whole life I had been waiting for somebody to tell me I was special… It changed everything for me.” - Darnell Ferguson It’s a line meant to counter the weight of expectation that Sunday school and children’s Bibles can sometimes put on children, Lloyd-Jones said. Now, I do have some concerns about it. I think that the positives outweigh the concerns, but I think the concerns we still need to keep in our mind, and my main concern with The Jesus Storybook Bible is that it focuses on God's love more than any other attribute. Every story focuses on God's love, which to some degree that's accurate because God is love. So every story throughout scripture is going to be interwoven with God's love. But the problem that I see with that is that God's other attributes, the fact that God is just, the fact that God does have wrath towards sin, the fact that God is omnipotent or omnipresent, those attributes tend to be overshadowed by God's love. And anytime we elevate one of God's attributes above the rest, we're in danger of wandering off into heresy.