Taking Ground | Week 7
Day 2
“Now then, just as the Lord promised, he has kept me alive for forty-five years…” -Joshua 14:10
There is something deeply steady about Caleb’s words.
“Just as the Lord promised…”
He is 85 years old when he says this. His hair is gray. His body bears the wear of decades. He has buried friends. He has walked through wilderness seasons longer than many people live.
And yet, standing before Joshua, he anchors everything in this simple statement: God kept His word.
Forty-five years earlier, Caleb had stood at the edge of the Promised Land as a 40-year-old man. He was one of twelve spies sent to explore Canaan (Numbers 13). He saw the land flowing with milk and honey. He also saw giants, the Anakites, and cities fortified to the sky.
Ten spies came back overwhelmed. Their report spread fear through the camp. “We can’t attack those people; they are stronger than we are” (Numbers 13:31). Fear is contagious. Before long, the entire nation was ready to turn back.
But Caleb spoke differently.
“We should go up and take possession of the land, for we can certainly do it” (Numbers 13:30).
What made the difference?
It wasn’t that Caleb didn’t see the giants. He saw them clearly. But he viewed them through the lens of God’s promise.
God had said the land would be theirs.
Caleb believed God.
And what did that faithfulness earn him?
Forty years of wandering in the wilderness.
This is where faith is tested.
Caleb was right, but he still suffered the consequences of the nation’s unbelief. He wandered with everyone else. He endured the heat, the dust, the monotony. He watched an entire generation die in the desert because they refused to trust God.
It would have been easy, understandably easy, for Caleb to grow cynical.
To say, “What was the point of trusting God? I still ended up here.”
But 45 years later, he says, “Just as the Lord promised…”
The wilderness did not change his view of God.
Families experience wilderness seasons too.
There are years that don’t look like promise. Years when the marriage feels strained. Years when finances are tight. Years when children struggle or wander. Years when prayers feel unanswered and obedience seems costly.
And in those seasons, something subtle can happen.
We begin to reinterpret God through our pain.
Maybe He isn’t as faithful as I thought.
Maybe obedience doesn’t really matter.
Maybe this promise isn’t going to happen after all.
But Caleb refused to rewrite his theology in the wilderness.
He remembered what God had said through Moses: “The land on which your feet have walked will be your inheritance and that of your children forever, because you have followed the Lord wholeheartedly” (Joshua 14:9).
Notice that phrase, “your children forever.”
Caleb’s faith was never just about him. It was generational.
Your faith in the wilderness is not just about you. It is shaping what your children believe about God.
They are watching how you respond when life gets hard.
If you panic, they learn anxiety.
If you grow bitter, they associate faith with disappointment.
If you quietly abandon trust in God, they will feel it.
But if you remain steady, if you hold to the conviction that God is good, they will learn resilience.
Hebrews 10:23 says, “Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful.”
Unswerving faith does not mean loud faith. It means anchored faith.
Caleb did not give an emotional speech. He simply rehearsed the faithfulness of God. “Just as the Lord promised…”
He looked back over 45 years and saw evidence of preservation. “He has kept me alive…”
Sometimes the most obvious proof of God’s faithfulness is that you are still standing.
You may not be where you hoped to be yet. The promise may feel delayed. But you are still here. Still believing. Still walking.
Lamentations 3:22–23 says, “Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed… great is your faithfulness.”
Those words were written in the middle of devastation. Yet even in ruins, Jeremiah declared God faithful.
Caleb did the same in the wilderness.
Taking ground in your family begins with a settled conviction: God is good. He keeps His promises. Delay does not mean denial.
Forty-five years after the initial promise, Caleb was not weaker in faith, he was stronger. The wilderness had not diminished his trust; it had deepened it.
And here is what is beautiful: his strength at 85 was built on belief at 40.
Strength later in life is rooted in trust earlier in life.
If you want your family to take ground, start here. Refuse to let hardship redefine God for you. Refuse to let delay distort your view of His character.
Say it out loud when necessary:
“Just as the Lord promised…”
When finances are tight.
When relationships are strained.
When progress feels slow.
Remind your heart who God is.
Because families that hold firmly to the goodness of God in the wilderness are families that eventually stand in promise.
Caleb did.
And so can you.
