1KHO 876: The Freedom Of Trying Less Hard | Sally Llyod-Jones, Jesus Storybook Bible

**Ginny** (0:00)
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I'm the founder of 1000 Hours Outside, and it is truly an honor to have Sally Lloyd-Jones back with us today. Welcome, Sally.

**Sally Lloyd-Jones** (1:13)
Thank you so much for having me.

**Ginny** (1:15)
So you came out with a book earlier. Was it earlier this year? Maybe the end of 2025?

**Sally Lloyd-Jones** (1:21)
End of 2025, yeah.

**Ginny** (1:22)
That's right. End of 2025, Jesus, Our True Friend, a beautiful storybook to read with children. Our family has loved it. Our youngest daughter is nine. So we have loved reading that together with her. You're a New York Times bestselling writer of over 40 books for children. All different kinds of books.
How to Be a Baby, By Me, The Big Sister, A Baby Wren and The Great Gift, all sorts of different types of books. But something that's really special is that the 20th anniversary of The Jesus Storybook Bible is next year, and there's going to be a tour. So can you take us back, Sally?
Maybe 22 years, maybe 23, 22, 23 years, maybe longer. Where was that seed planted that you were going to take on this task of writing a storybook Bible for children?

**Sally Lloyd-Jones** (2:13)
Well, I'll answer that by telling a story. I once was watching someone doing a master doing Scrimshaw, which is the engraving they do on ivory, and it was in Nantucket, and it's really intricate work.
I said to him, how long does that take you? He thought, and he went, probably about 15 hours and 30 years. What he means is, our whole lives go into what we end up doing, don't we? So for me, I think the seed for that, at least the thing that really drove me was, I grew up in a Christian home, I knew Jesus loved me, he was my best friend. That was very clear to me, but I wasn't so clear about God. I thought maybe he was mean and that I had to be good for him to love me. And the memory I have is when I was six, I was walking to Sunday school holding my dad's hand. And even though I knew Jesus was my best friend, inside I was making a vow that when I grow up, I'm never going to church ever again.
So what had gone wrong? What had gone wrong was however that Sunday school were meaning, they might have been very well meaning. But me as a six-year-old, the message I got was I'm not doing it right. God can't be pleased with me. It was all about me and what I wasn't doing or was doing and all the rules. And I would say that was the seed that grew into, I don't want children to start off life thinking that God is someone who's demanding them to be perfect so he can love them.
So that's where that sort of passion came from. And then fast forward all these years later, I'm working in publishing and I hadn't left to be a writer, but I was getting a name for distilling Bible stories into very simple things. And then I got laid off and I needed money and I was without a job, and I didn't have a pension or a 401k. And in that tight space, an opportunity came to work on a children's Bible. Now, I didn't think a children's Bible was really going to be for everyone. I thought that was just for the church because I wasn't really thinking big enough.