I got a year older today. January 1 marks my 76th year. 

On my 65th birthday, I joked with Jan and said that we had now become old. She shot back and said, “We aren’t old yet!” On my 70th birthday, I asked the same question and received the same response. Last year, on my 75th birthday, I posed the question again and got the same answer. Our definition of “old” has been migrating to 80 years of age. I am expecting the same response from Jan when my 80th birthday arrives. 

Our lives sound like the lyrics of Bob Dylan’s song “Forever Young,” without living in the illusion of being forever young, framed by hair dye or plastic surgery. 

The devil is a thief of our aging process. Many people are looking back on their lives and feel that certain years have been stolen from them.  They recount life from times when they followed certain sins, the pain of betrayal, the calamities of life, unexpected sickness, or the missteps of life. 

Caleb offered us valuable insight on how to age well. “I was forty years old when Moses the servant of the Lord sent me from Kadesh Barnea to explore the land. And I brought him back a report according to my convictions” (Joshua 14: 7).  It would be the convictions of Caleb’s life that would define the next 45 years of his life.

“Now then, just as the Lord promised, he has kept me alive for forty-five years since the time he said this to Moses, while Israel moved about in the wilderness. So here I am today, eighty-five years old! I am still as strong today as the day Moses sent me out; I’m just as vigorous to go out to battle now as I was then” (Joshua 14:10-11).

There’s a formula in Caleb’s words that will keep us alive and prospering in our faith until we take our last breath. Caleb offered three things we need that will keep us alive and fully functioning in God’s Kingdom.

We need to remind ourselves that God is our strength, not our age.

Caleb said, “God has kept me alive.” The length of our years and our remaining strength do not have the final say. God keeps us alive for purposes greater than we could imagine.

We need to always live with a fresh vision.

Caleb lived to take another mountain at eighty-five. In each season of life, we need to follow the instructions of a renewed mind. There will come new missions that God asks us to accomplish, which will defy the limitations of our age. Our convictions will lead us forward. It’s in those moments that we cannot allow doubters to determine the measure and scope of our vision.

We need a renewed passion for the inheritance we will leave behind.

Some people have been kept alive by their passion to impact the next generation. As long as they mentor the next generation, impart greater measures of faith, and reveal God’s wisdom, those things will be used by God to keep us alive long enough to accomplish His purposes.

Growing older is not a declining season of life. It is time to become even more courageous and effective, allowing God to do astounding things in and through us that our younger selves could not have imagined possible.