Growing Old, Growing Stronger

Cover Article

by Michael Jones · Week of September 20, 2026

Our culture wages a quiet war against aging. We stockpile creams, undergo procedures, and speak of growing older in terms of loss: loss of beauty, loss of energy, loss of relevance. Along the way, many of us absorb a corrosive lie: that our best years are behind us once our hair grays, that God has no fresh work to accomplish in a body slowing down. But God sees the passing of years through an altogether different lens. The Psalmist declares, “The righteous will flourish like a palm tree, they will grow like a cedar in Lebanon; planted in the house of the Lord, they will flourish in the courts of our God. They will still bear fruit in old age, they will stay fresh and green” (Psalm 92:12–14). Picture that: not a withered stump clinging to one last leaf, but a towering cedar still reaching skyward, roots sunk deep in holy ground, branches heavy with living fruit. The righteous do not fade. They flourish. They bear fruit. They stay green. This is not poetic sentimentality. It is the promise of the living God.

Isaiah records an extraordinary pledge from God: “Even to your old age and gray hairs I am he, I am he who will sustain you. I have made you and I will carry you; I will sustain you and I will rescue you” (Isaiah 46:4). God does not promise that we will never grow old. What He promises is that He will never set us aside as no longer useful. He sustains. He carries. He rescues. The same hands that fashioned you in your mother’s womb hold you in your final years, and they have not grown weary. Paul understood this from the inside out. Near the end of a life battered by shipwrecks, beatings, and imprisonments, he declared, “Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all” (2 Corinthians 4:16–17). Paul did not deny the toll of aging. His body was wasting away. But he insisted that something inside him was moving in the opposite direction. While the outer shell crumbled, the inner person was being renewed, deepened by the Spirit of the living God.

Here is what we need to reclaim: spiritual transformation has no expiration date. You do not age out of knowing God more deeply, trusting Him more fully, or loving His people more completely. The passing of years often hands you advantages the young cannot yet possess. You carry decades of God’s faithfulness in your memory. You have survived difficulties that once seemed impossible. You have learned what actually matters. Proverbs 16:31 says, “Gray hair is a crown of glory; it is gained in a righteous life.” In God’s kingdom, the years etched into your face are not marks of decline but badges of honor. One of the great losses of modern life is the sidelining of elder wisdom. Titus 2:2–5 instructs older men and women to teach and model godliness for the younger generation. Our churches need voices seasoned by decades of walking with God, voices that can say from experience, “God is faithful. I have seen it with my own eyes.”

If you find yourself in the later seasons of life, hear this: you have something irreplaceable to offer. Your prayers carry the weight of a lifetime of dependence on God. Your presence in the assembly encourages those just beginning the journey. The character forged through years of trial is a living testimony to the sufficiency of Christ. Young people need to see you continuing to grow, continuing to serve, continuing to find joy in the Lord. They need to know that following Jesus is not something you do for forty years and then retire from. It is the joyful labor of an entire lifetime. You are not standing at the end of your story. You are standing at its richest chapter. Like a cedar of Lebanon still reaching toward the sky, you have wisdom to share, love to pour out, and prayers to lift up. Do not let a culture that worships youth convince you that your usefulness is over. In the eyes of the God who made you, carried you, and sustains you still, you have never mattered more. He is not finished with you yet. “So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal” (2 Corinthians 4:18). - MJ

Other congregations are welcome to reprint this. It may be reproduced in another congregation’s bulletin or newsletter without asking permission. An acknowledgement of Orange View Church of Christ is appreciated but not required.

Bible Questions & Answers

A friend of mine was once a Catholic priest. He left the priesthood, and he told me that part of what broke him was that he simply could not believe he had the power to forgive anyone's sins. Today he says the Bible is unreliable and that Jesus was a good moral teacher, nothing more. What do I say?

Begin by telling him he was right.

Not about everything. About the ability of man to forgive sins.

The moment he balked, he was standing exactly where a room full of scribes stood in Capernaum. Four men had torn open a roof and lowered a paralyzed friend through it. Jesus looked down and said, "Son, your sins are forgiven." The scribes never said a word aloud, but Mark tells us what they were thinking: "Why does this man speak like that? He is blaspheming! Who can forgive sins but God alone?" (Mark 2:7).

That question is not skepticism. It is sound theology. Sin is finally against God, so only God can release a man from it. Your friend reached that conviction honestly, from the inside, and it cost him a vocation and probably most of his friendships. Tell him you respect that. Very few men will pay that price for a conviction.

Then show him what Jesus did with the question. He did not soften it. He did not explain it away. He answered it with a demonstration: "But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins," and he told the paralytic to pick up his mat and go home (Mark 2:10–11). The man walked out through the crowd.

Here is the turn your friend missed. He asked the scribes' question and then took the scribes' exit. He concluded that no one can forgive sins. Scripture concludes something narrower and far more startling: no one but God can, and this man does.

Which is precisely why the "good moral teacher" position will not bear weight. The very thing your friend found intolerable in himself is something Jesus did openly and repeatedly. He told a paralyzed stranger his sins were forgiven. He told a weeping woman at his feet the same thing, and the men at the table asked the obvious question: "Who is this, who even forgives sins?" (Luke 7:49). He received worship. He said he would judge the living and the dead. A good teacher does not do these things. A good teacher, of all people, does not do these things, because his goodness would be the first casualty. Your friend already senses this in his bones. He walked away rather than claim an authority he did not have. Ask him to hold Jesus to that same standard and see where it leaves him.

Now some practical counsel.

Ask what happened before you argue anything. Leaving the priesthood is not a change of opinion; it is closer to a bereavement. People rarely reason their way out of faith in a straight line. Somewhere in the story there is usually a wound, a scandal, a decade of exhaustion, a prayer that went unanswered. If you open with evidence, he hears a debate. Ask him to tell you the whole story, and then listen to all of it without correcting a syllable.

Separate the institution from the Lord. His disillusionment may be entirely warranted and still tell him nothing about whether the tomb was empty. Losing confidence in a system is not evidence against a Savior.

Remember who you are talking to. This man has read more Scripture than most members of your congregation. He has sat with the dying. He has heard confessions. Do not lecture him; he has spent years on the answering side of the table. Ask questions instead, and aim them at the bedrock: is the New Testament a trustworthy historical record, and did Jesus rise from the dead? Everything else is downstream of those two. Until they are settled, he will keep deciding what is true by how he feels, which is exactly the ground he is standing on now.

Watching "The Case for Christ" together is a good place to start. Lee Strobel tells his own story before he makes his case, which is the order your friend needs. I have watched it with people who came out of it saying they needed to rethink everything.

Finally, be patient, and stay his friend whether he comes back or not. The road home for a former priest runs through the same door as it does for the rest of us. Not a robe, an office, or a title, but the same crucified and risen Lord who once told a man on a mat to get up and walk.