Sozo: To Preserve? - Blog by Doug Jonson
Posted on Wednesday, March 14, 2012 by
SOZO: TO PRESERVE?
by Doug Jonson
I am the Director of our weekly ministry in the Hilltop called Sozo. People often ask me what Sozo stands for and I explain that it’s a Greek word that’s used 108 times in the New Testament, including the passage in Luke 19:10 where Jesus was talking about the despised tax-collector, Zacchaeus: “For the Son of Man came to seek and to savewhat was lost.” The Greek word for “save” in this passage is “Sozo.”
“Sozo” is a powerful word, and has many meanings: deliverance, restoration, protection, healing, making whole, and preservation.
When I first started working with our youth through this ministry, I was so excited about these meanings of the word because this was so fitting for what God wanted to do in the lives of our youth.
God wants to deliver our youth from their bondage and addictions.
God wants to restore our youth to the original purpose and design He has over their lives.
God wants to protect our youth from the power and influence of the enemy.
God wants to heal our youth from the pain and injustice in their lives.
God wants to make our youth whole from the wounds they’ve endured.
But preservation? The other definitions of the word excited me, but this meaning of the word seemed so passive and unexciting.
I’ve only been doing urban youth ministry for 6 years—not a long time compared to heroes of the faith like John Perkins and Wayne Gordon. But in 6 years, my perspective has radically shifted, and I now view everyone and everything with a long-term perspective. I’ve began to walk with youth from grade school to early adulthood, I’m realizing that one of the most consistent and powerful things that God has been doing is preserving. Time and time again I have seen God preserving our youth, especially as we’ve started working with kids at a young age…
God has been preserving the child-like innocence that He originally designed for their lives.
God has been preserving a purity that He never intended to be lost.
God has been preserving our kids’ hearts to trust and be loved.
I’ve noticed that as our kids begin to receive Jesus Christ as their Savior, allowing others to love them, trust and be trusted…something begins to happen: they seem younger. I don’t mean that they become more immature…not only is God doing a preserving work in the lives of our kids, He begins to do a restoring work of giving them back the childhood that many never experienced. God begins to peel away the hardened lays of self-protection and kids begin to play and laugh in ways that they should have when they were younger. Everyone who went to camp with us last year knows exactly what I’m talking about: we brought more than 200 kids to camp, and almost all of them spent about 3 hours each day in the shallow end of the pool, laughing and playing like my 5-year-old Lucy does. It was a beautiful thing to see. It’s such an honor to play a part in God’s restoring work, but it’s so much more exciting to be a part of the preserving work of a child. God, our prayer for them is that the child-like purity never be lost in the first place.