In honor of Older Americans month, we’re celebrating the voices of seasoned saints—those who have weathered the storms of life with Jesus by their side and whose lives overflow with hard-won wisdom, enduring faith, and a legacy worth passing on.
All of these quotes come from conversations on the Eternal Echoes podcast, which you can access on Apple, Spotify or YouTube.
Here are some answers to the question, “What have you learned about God that you wish you’d known when you were younger?”:
1. Nothing is too small to bring to God
“I have to re-emphasize: Jesus wants to have a personal relationship with all of us through His Holy Spirit. God desires our attention. He wants to sit with us and hear what’s on our heart.
Growing up, I was told, don’t bother Him with that. That’s too small. Don’t pray for the weather for your picnic. He doesn’t care about that. I’m here to tell you He does. He has numbered the hairs on our head. He absolutely cares about every detail on our life. And the truth is there’s nothing too small that we can’t take to Him. He already knows it anyway.”
–Meg Barry, 74 years old
“Navigating the Wilderness: Grief, Identity & Learning to Forgive”
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2. God loves you even in your immaturity
“I’ve learned that God loves me even in my immaturity. He is for me even when I’m immature and I’m looking and I’m searching and I’m struggling to try to find my way. And I heard somebody say this once and it really helped me: there’s a difference between a sheep and a pig. When a sheep falls into the mud, they don’t like it. They struggle to get out and they just don’t wanna be there. And if you help them out, they’re so grateful and they don’t wanna go back. And to me, that’s our immaturity. We fall in the mud sometimes. But the pig, on the other hand, he likes the mud. And if you help him out, there’s a good chance he’s gonna go back in. But to understand God loves you, even in the process, even in our immaturity. He doesn’t love me more today than He did when I was 21.”
–Sue Otten, 68
“Overcoming Fear and Anxiety, Why Our Daily Choices Matter & Waiting on God”
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3. God is always up to good
“I learned that God is always up to good in my life. That He can’t do anything but be good. He works behind the scenes and we don’t get to see really what He’s doing behind the scenes. But He says He is working for my good and He has a good plan for me. So I know He’s doing something up there to make this work for me and for my best. He wants only the best for us.
And He is faithful 100%. He can’t be anything but that. That’s who He is. But we have to step up to it and say, ‘Yes, I’ll trust you. I’ll have faith in you. I believe you’re up to good in my life. You know what’s right for me.’”
–Wendy Farr, 75
“Overcoming Rejection: Embracing Your Identity in Christ & Choosing to Believe God”
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4. You are here to give God glory
“I think there’s the mistaken idea that God is here to please me. He’s here for me. Not, I’m here to give glory to Him. It’s all about Him, it’s not all about me. And I just think that reversal of thinking makes a huge difference in your life. He’s not your servant to say, God I need this, God I want this, God do this, God do that, but God, how can I bring glory to you today?”
–Sally Michael, 70 years old
“Understanding God’s Sovereignty & Accepting Trials with Joy”
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5. You have to stand on your identity in Christ
“One of the most important things is your identity in Christ. And that is believing what He says about you. You only get that from reading the Word. And when you stand on believing that, it makes it a lot easier to walk out your life in victory, even when you sin.
And when I don’t feel that way, I have to just declare it out loud. I take those scriptures that tell me who I am and what God says about me: ‘I’m the daughter of a king.’ You have to declare things out loud because they’re more powerful that way. Not that God can’t hear you if you whisper them to yourself, but when you declare out loud things like ‘I’m righteous because Christ is righteous,’ the enemy has to flee. He has to flee at the name of Jesus. So if the enemy’s trying to say to me, ‘Marian, you’re no different today than you were 20 years ago’, I say, ‘Yeah, wrong! Jesus says that I am.’”
–Marian Newell, 69 years old
“Holding onto Hope and Finding Purpose Through Loss”
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6. God wants you to be wise
“One of the biggest things I’ve learned is that He is wise and He wants us to be wise. He wants to fully be in your life. And He has wisdom for you and He has guidance and direction for you, you just have to tap into Him. He’s right there.
A phrase that has become one of my life phrases is asking the question: ‘What is the wise thing for me to do based on my present circumstances, based on my past experiences, and based on my future hopes and dreams?’”
–Barb Turner, 77
“Overcoming Depression and the Desire to be Liked”
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7. God not only forgives, He forgets
“One of my favorite verses, Hebrews 8:12, talks about forgiveness. It says, ‘For I will forgive their wickedness, and I will remember their sins no more.’ And when my kids were little, I’d put my hands up like this to my face and hide the one side. And I’d say, ‘He doesn’t see it anymore. Once you’re sorry and you tell Him you’re sorry, He doesn’t remember.’ And I think that’s the struggle we all have, of like, I remember 10 years ago I did this, or two months ago I did this and I wish I hadn’t…but He forgives. But the great thing is we serve a God who actually forgets.”
–Skip O’Kelly, 72 years old
“The Power of God’s Forgiveness and Remaining Faithful”
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8. God doesn’t stop loving you
“I think that one of the most important things that I’ve ever learned is how important it is to understand how much God loves you. Because we are so easily down on ourselves. They always say that if you sin, ask forgiveness, repent, and pick yourself up and get on with it. Because God doesn’t stop loving you. He doesn’t not forgive you.
And it’s something I struggled with my entire life. I think, a lot of times, I didn’t feel worthy. I always felt inadequate. And you know what? As Paul says, when we are weak, then He is strong. And to embrace your inadequacies, not to live with sin or not to live with failure. But to look beyond your failures and embrace the fact that you’ve invited the living God into your heart, and He will make out of you what He wants. All you have to do is cooperate. And if we don’t understand that, if we don’t continually turn and feel His acceptance and feel His love, we don’t get over ourselves, too. You’ve just got to shake that off.”
–Kim Lewis, 68
“Overcoming Cancer and Healing from Sexual Abuse”
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9. God wants a relationship with you
“One of the most important things is that it’s all about the relationship with God. God wants to have relationship with us. Jesus wants to have relationship with us. Holy Spirit wants to have relationship. It’s not just about checking the boxes.
And the relationship is what will keep us out of trouble. You know, I think trying to check the boxes, that performance thing, it gets old, it gets tiring, and you can’t be perfect. But God is not asking us to be perfect. When we lean on Him and we have that relationship with Him, that’s what keeps us out of trouble.”
–Dot Byrdic, 75 years old
“Overcoming a Religious Spirit and Learning to Trust God”
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10. God accepts you just as you are
“I wish I’d known that God accepted me just as I was. Even though at times I felt like a misfit, I just didn’t fit in. That took a while for me to really accept. And I can remember hearing a message where they recommended that I look in the mirror every day and say, ‘God loves me just as I am. He accepts me just as I am.’ And I did that every day for about a month until I said, okay, I’m gonna choose to believe that. And it was a choice. I didn’t feel anything, but I knew that that was God.
Someone had shared a long time ago that it’s fact, faith, and then feeling. You might get the feeling later, but you’ve got to put your faith in the fact of what the Word of God says. And so I didn’t feel it, I wasn’t feeling it, but I knew that to be true.”
–Jeri Greenwold, 84 years old
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11. God loves being involved in your life
“God loves being involved in your life and He wants you to be with Him no matter how small it is. Pray about everything. There is nothing too small to pray about. Pray for a parking place. Before you leave your house, say, ‘Lord, I’m going to the store and I need a parking place. Can you help me to find a parking place?’ We look at certain things and say we can take control. When we gave our lives to Jesus Christ, it wasn’t a 50-50 proposition, I’ll run my life 50% of the time and you help me 50% of the time. No, it’s 100%. God’s running the show. He’s dictating, He’s running it. Release your control and have God work through you.”
–Bruce Jacobs, 67 years old
“Divine Dreams, and Angel Encounter and Hungering After God”
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12. God created you just the way you are
“I wish I would have learned a long time ago to embrace myself. Because even in my upbringing when I was in high school, I was never cool enough to be in the popular group, but neither did I fit in with the unpopular. I was always in that in-between.
And then as I went into ministry and my friends were the pastors and the pastor’s wives traveling and teaching around the world. And I never was sitting at those tables of leadership, but because of the positions I held in the ministry, I knew what was going on at the tables. So I was never part of that circle, but neither was I just a church member. So I was always in that in-between and I remember feeling the awkwardness of that at times. But in that, I devalued my own voice a lot and who I was. But through the years, learning to embrace myself and realizing He created me just the way I am, and His unbelievable, amazing, deep, wide, depth of His love for me.”
–Laurel Roth, 69 years old
“Finding Purpose and Contentment in Singleness”
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13. God has a purpose for you as long as you’re breathing
“It doesn’t matter how old you are, it doesn’t matter what the situation is, God has purpose for us as long as we are breathing. And I have seen and heard of people who are in comas, who understand what’s going on, but they’re being used by God. You could pray, if you don’t do anything else, you could pray. You could pray in your mind, even if you can’t talk. There’s no end to what God has for you as long as you’re breathing.
There’s no such word as retire in the kingdom of God. You don’t retire when you’re in the kingdom of God. You refire. You get refired for the next assignment is what happens.”
–Nancy Kling, 92 years old
“Forgetting What Lies Behind”
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14. What God thinks of you is most important
“I wish I’d known more about my identity in Christ a long time ago. I wish I’d known more about what God thinks of me and that that’s most important, not what others think of me. I used to define myself as what I did. I mentioned that I was a mother, a teacher, a caretaker, and the enemy would tell me things like, ‘You’re not that good, or see you failed at that. Nope, you don’t measure up, sorry.’
So, it’s so important that we shed any lies and traps and lean into what God says we are. We are chosen. We are forgiven. We are treasured. We are empowered. And once we can fully internalize that truth, we’re given a joyful freedom and a purpose that honestly is limitless.”
–Meg Barry, 74 years old
“Navigating the Wilderness: Grief, Identity & Learning to Forgive”
Listen on Apple, Spotify or YouTube
15. God’s love is unconditional
“I wish that I had known when I was younger His unconditional love, how great it is. I mean, it’s unfathomable really. Just the fact that He would come after me and I didn’t want anything to do with Him. And He’s like, no, no, no, I want to have that relationship with you. And I think that we have these lies about who He is and we fall for the lies of the enemy that tells us when we mess up that we need to hide from Him. You know, that’s what Adam did in the garden.
But that’s one of my heart cries that people will just know who He is because He’s nothing like most people think He is. He’s good. And I mean, this is a God who wants to be with us. He’s not far away. Matter of fact, He wants to know us so much and have relationship with us so much that He became human and lived among us and suffered the things that we suffered, even worse things than we suffer, just so we could have relationship with Him.”
–Malinda Dietrich, 70 years old
“Experiencing God’s Presence & Healing from Self-Hatred”
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16. God has a plan for your life
“Slow down, trust and believe. God has a plan for your life, but it’s a lot easier to pull a rope than it is to push a rope. And if you just hang in there, things work out. But you just have to keep doing the right things right and things will take shape for you. The good way lies in following what you learn from the Bible. The world isn’t going to show you the good way. Follow where God leads you.”
–John Linke, 75 years old
“Succeeding in the World & Sowing into the Kingdom”
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17. God is always holding you by the hand
“He will put a path before you. Sometimes you just have to whack away a few weeds to get to it. And sometimes it’s a BAM and sometimes it’s a whisper. But He’s always holding our hand. A lot of times we let go. But He’s holding our hand and we have to grasp onto His and just hold on for dear life. We might be scared or feel like we’re lagging behind or we’re not paying attention, but He grabs us by the hand and He picks us up, puts us on His shoulders or carries us in His arms because He’s our Abba.”
–Chris Linke, 74 years old
“Discovering True Joy: Rejoicing in the Lord through Life’s Trials”
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18. God just wants to hang out with you
“The thing I’m learning is how much God wants to be with me, not just rule over me. So He is my companion. And that’s what He also said in John 15: “I no longer call you servants, I call you friends.” And think about what you do with your best friend. You hang out. You don’t need to be entertained. You just hang out. And God looks at you and says, ‘She is so dear to me. I just want to hang out with her.’”
–Sue Donaldson, 72 years old
“Practicing Hospitality: Reflecting God’s Welcoming Heart”
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19. God is in charge of your identity
“I’ve come to know that He is in charge of my identity. I don’t pick an identity. He chooses that identity for me. He did a long time. He knit me together in my mother’s womb for such a day as this. I am who He says I am. I run everything through a filter no matter what I do. And it is, ‘Is what I’m about to do or say pleasing to you, Lord?’ And if you ask Him that, He’ll tell you. I have become very submissive. And when we live that prayerful life, we’re not going to go do the next wrong thing. We’re going to do the next right thing.”
–Deb Copeland, 70 years old
“Healing from Childhood Trauma & Becoming Who God Created You to Be”
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20. God is present with you today
“I’ve learned to pay attention to the small things. Because God is present with us today. And He’s revealing His love to us today. And so maybe we would love to have big miracles and be around big miracles, but God’s got some stuff for us to see and experience today in experiencing His love.
And we all qualify. Nothing disqualifies us. We are qualified. And it’s not based on whether we went to Bible school or whether we worked for a missionary organization. That doesn’t matter. He wants all of us to experience His kingdom here on earth.”
–Rosemary Cabiness, 73 years old
“Never Abandoned: Experiencing God’s Provision & Protection”
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21. God wants to be invited into your mess
“You don’t have to clean up your act before you give it to Jesus. I’m a mess. I’m still a mess. I will be a mess in this journey. I will make the same dumb mistakes over and over again. But my errors are not condemnation sentences. My errors are simply little bumps along the way, my way of appearing human. But first and foremost, don’t wait to clean up your act before you fall into the loving arms of the One who loves you best. He’s walking through the messiness of life with you, if you let Him.”
–Laurie Meek Watkins, 68
“Overcoming Loss & Inviting Jesus into Your Mess”
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22. God loves you and asks you to love Him
“He’s got all kinds of scriptures that lets us know that He loves us and He wants us to love Him. And that’s really what He’s asking. We have 101 things we can ask for. But He’s mainly asking from us to love Him. And if we really love Him, it’s like loving anybody else in your family: you’re going to try to do what’s right.”
–Pat Vallefuoco, 85 years old
“Legacy of Faith: Reflections on Walking with God from a Mother-Daughter Duo”
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23. Daily obedience leads you into the will of God
“One of the most significant things I’ve ever learned is that the will of God unfolds day by day, and obedience today unlocks the will of God for me tomorrow. And if I try to have it all figured out before I take the first steps, I’m not ever going to do anything.
And word of the Lord brings faith, but it works like this: “God speaks, faith comes. We obey and faith grows.” Many times we leave the last two off. We just think if I hear a good message, my faith is going to be strong. No, it’s important to hear a good message. It’s important to hear the Lord, but then you obey it. And it’s as you walk it out, that’s where your faith grows. And we have to understand that we develop as we obey. And if we don’t obey, we never develop.” We can get head knowledge, but we don’t really develop in the way that we’re supposed to.”
–Rodney Lloyd, 76 years old
“Stepping Out in Faith & Staying Faithful in Every Season”
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24. God wants you to be free
“Forgiveness is not about emotion. It’s not about feeling like you want to forgive or feeling empathy for the person. It’s more about obedience. And taking that step of obedience is really about releasing yourself, not the other person. It’s to break those chains. Because that’s all that unforgiveness does. That bitterness and hatred and anger, it’s like wrapping yourself up in chains. And the only way to get free of it is forgiveness.”
–Cynde Morris, 64
“Releasing Anger & Forgiving What You Can’t Forget”
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25. God wants you to root your identity in Him
“What I learned is that I had been dependent on a title and a paycheck to validate me. And that was not what God wanted. I needed to be rooted in my identity in Christ. And through this very long, painful, complicated several years, He taught me that I couldn’t be dependent on anything external to validate me. I’m a beloved child of God and that’s not going to change. Anything else can change, but that doesn’t.”
–Laura Crosby, 67 years old
“Using Your Gifts: Connecting with God and Others”
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26. God’s voice is different from Satan’s
“I wish I had know the difference between God’s voice and the enemy’s voice. God’s voice calms and comforts and convicts, which we need at times. Satan’s voice obsesses and worries and condemns. God’s voice encourages, enlightens and leads and Satan’s voice discourages, confuses, and pushes. God’s voice reassures and stills us while the enemy frightens us and rushes us. When we’re all distracted and rushed around and we don’t get the ability to just be calm and have peace, that’s the enemy trying to work his destructive ways.”
–Meg Barry, 74 years old
“Navigating the Wilderness: Grief, Identity & Learning to Forgive”
Listen on Apple, Spotify or YouTube
27. You have to choose to believe God
“The enemy wants us to believe lies and anything that God says, he wants to say the opposite. So I think you have to learn who you are in Christ and then you have to recognize what the lies are. And you have to make a choice. Are you going to believe the enemy or are you going to believe God? And believing God is a decision we make because our thoughts might go another way or our feelings for sure might go another way. But we can’t regard our feelings necessarily.
We have to remember when we’re thinking, is this from God? Is this how God feels about me? Did He say I was chosen? Yeah, He did. Did the enemy say you’re rejected? Yeah, he did. Well, which one am I going to believe? I’m going with God. And so I think that you have to know the word of God and then you have to believe it for yourself.”
–Wendy Farr, 75 years old
“Overcoming Rejection: Embracing Your Identity in Christ & Choosing to Believe God”
Listen on Apple, Spotify or YouTube
28. If you seek the Lord, you will find Him
“In 48 years of walking with the Lord, I have never sought Him and not found Him. He has been so faithful to me. It’s like, I look at this picture at our grocery store. When you go down the frozen food aisle, the containers are dark until you start walking down the aisle. And with every step you take, the light comes on so you can see what’s in the cooler. And so I’ve just kind of always likened that to my walk with the Lord. In every season, every step I take, there is light, there is revelation, there’s truth, there’s a word from God that illuminates for me what is in that season that is the provision of the Lord for me.”
–Sue Otten, 68
“Overcoming Fear and Anxiety, Why Our Daily Choices Matter & Waiting on God”
Listen on Apple, Spotify or YouTube
29. God’s mercies are new every morning
“Focus on the mercies of God. They are new every morning. Every morning you wake up and you have breath in your lungs. And so focus on the good things. Suffering is a part of the human condition. Just assume it’s going to happen in every person’s life. There’s going to be suffering. But the blessings that God brings are so undeserved and they’re poured on us every single day.”
–Sally Michael, 70 years old
“Understanding God’s Sovereignty & Accepting Trials with Joy”
Listen on Apple, Spotify or YouTube