I wonder how many of you reading this launched a great new product to a substantial fanfare a few years ago, saw healthy interest and growth in Year 1, and then have seen everything stall since as Covid kicked in and stopped everything. If that’s you, believe us, you have our sympathy. That’s not to say, necessarily, that we’re having a big whinge here, every one of us has friends or knows people whose lives have been pretty well shattered by Covid and to them our hearts really go out, but, you know…well, put it this way, we had different plans for Sozo for Couples in ’20 and ’21.
And ’22? Who knows? What with Covid, climate change and, for most of us, increasingly challenging political and economic environments it could be said that there is much to hope for but little to expect. But God.
But God. An extraordinary combination of two words that express the ultimate answer to every conceivable problem. Charles Dickens famously starts his ‘Tale of Two Cities’ with the sentence “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair” and you don’t get a much better start to a book than that, but our determination as we head into ’22 is that we take Dicken’s quote and apply ‘But God’ to it. ‘But God’ can convert the worst of times into the best of times, darkness into light, despair into hope, foolishness into wisdom and, through all of these things, turn incredulity into belief. As Jesus followers we must wear our faith on our sleeves and be the carriers of light and hope into the lives of those we live around and impact, no matter how dark or hopeless those lives may be. Doing so will enable us to be But God to them.
At Sozo for Couples we’re beginning the year as we did BC (yes, Before Covid) and have since, with a training for those who recognise the importance of marriage and who want to find out more about the Sozo for Couples’ ministry. We’re running it over a series of Monday evenings in January, starting on the 10th. You’ll find full details at https://sozoforcouples.org/store/#!/Sozo-for-Couples-online-training-10th-17th-24th-and-31st-January-2022/p/259747238/category=51869161, it would be good to have you along! If you book between the 3-10th January we will give you 25% of one of the other Sozo trainings done by Liz Gregg. Book and you’ll be sent the discount code.
We have no idea how the year will roll out, but as hope carriers we expect the best! And for us ‘the best’ will be meeting and greeting everyone reading this as we travel to you and your local church to teach, train and mentor, no matter where in the world you are. On that happy note may ’22 be full of His truth, His light and His promises, may you live every moment in Him and for Him, celebrating His peace, His provision and His love.