Swallowing Sunshine: Finding Joy with Brenda Savanhu and Marti Darcangelo

What does it feel like to truly encounter God's joy? 

In this episode of Just Talking About Jesus, Jan Johnson, Marti Darcangelo, and Brenda Savanhu gather around a powerful quote from Methodist missionary E. Stanley Jones — 

"When I met Christ, I felt that I had swallowed sunshine" — 

and let it spark a rich, honest conversation about choosing joy even in the darkest seasons. 

From King Jehoshaphat's battle cry to Moses glowing on the mountain, from Paul writing from prison to personal stories of desert seasons and breakthrough moments, this episode is a reminder that joy isn't just a feeling — it's a choice, a gift, and a witness to the world. 

Come swallow some sunshine with us.

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Transcript

Marti: In my life, there have been times where I've been so desperate,

I've chosen the wrong path. I've been super desperate. I've called out to the Lord,

and in my despair,

he comes along and takes care of me so well that my joy is that much greater because I've been through that process. I've watched the Lord work. I've chosen faith.

I've chose to trust the Lord.

It's that much more joyful when you come out the other side and you choose that joy.

Jan: Welcome, everybody. I am the host of Just Talking About Jesus, Jan Johnson. Glad you are here today. I have my friend Bradley, Brenda Z, and Marty Dark Angelo.

Marti: Hi.

Jan: Yeah, glad to have you. So, Marty, you came up with the idea of a title for this one. Tell us about that.

Marti: Right. Well,

our podcast format is a group chat about fun things that God does and sometimes hard things that God does. And I just was remembering a quote from East Stanley Jones.

He was a Methodist missionary theologian.

He was born in 1884 and he lived until 1973.

And listen to what he said upon his conversion. He said,

when I met Christ,

I felt that I had swallowed sunshine.

And that just lured me. It gave me so much joy. And I really understood.

Oh, that is what it's like when the Holy Spirit comes into your heart and you finally have something to anchor everything on.

It is like you follow sunshine.

So in a world full of podcasts that complain and I are stressful,

I thought it might be fun to talk about swallowing sunshine for a change. So I was hoping for an uplifting podcast for sure.

Jan: Yeah. Oh, right now couldn't be a better time than talking about joy and restoring our joy and finding.

Finding things that are joyful.

What is an Old Testament story of somebody that found joy?

Brenda: An Old Testament story of someone who found joy. I would say when Sarah had Isaac,

Jan: she laughed.

Brenda: Yeah,

I mean, she laughed initially when.

Right when the angel said, you're gonna have it.

Or was it the Lord? It was either the Lord or an angel. I forget which was which in. In Abraham's story. But,

you know, she laughed,

but then she laughed for real. Like, enjoy.

Marti: I'm thinking of 2nd Chronicles 2:20,

where I think it was King Jeroboam had all of these armies coming against him, and he hit the floor. He was really stressed and said,

God, we don't know what to do, but our eyes are on you.

And in the time of his greatest stress, the Lord says,

don't worry about it. I'll handle it. You don't even have to lift a finger. I've got this taken care of.

And how the people and the king rejoiced when the Lord took such great care of them.

So that.

That was a joyful experience.

Jan: Yeah,

I love that. I love it. How God's got our back. I mean. Yeah, because we just don't always remember that we're in the middle of something.

We're looking at all other things we can see that are supposed to fix things.

And then what did he do? He's got that joy right there to like.

And then you go, wait, why didn't I trust you before that?

Brenda: Yeah.

Marti: Right.

So I'm in an inductive Bible study on Isaiah right now, and it is so heavy.

I'm in chapter eight and chapter nine. And the us humans, we just.

If we would just trust the Lord.

And the Lord says, if you would just trust me,

I would give you everything. I'm going to take care of you. Just have a little bit of faith.

And we don't choose that as often as we should, especially as believers.

So it. It's causing me to renew my mind,

to choose joy.

And this morning I was reading 2 Corinthians 3:18,

which says,

and we all who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord's glory.

We're being transformed into his image with ever increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.

I was reminded about how I renew my mind and I choose joy.

Jan: Yeah. I think it is. A lot of times it is a choice because you look around and there's nothing around you that would indicate joyfulness,

you know? Yeah. But you're in the thick of some things, and we have a lot of voices that are bombarding us about things and.

And things don't currently look joyful, you know, so in a lot of ways, in a big way and in. In our own lives individually.

And I think, like, you know, Brenda has a book called Memorial Stones. And when you go back to those things where you've seen God has moved and been there,

it's so important to have those just to go back to you and say, yeah,

oh, here's what happened. Here's what. Maybe here's how I felt before, here's where God was. Here's how I felt afterwards,

you know,

And I see that God was there. I could trust him. He was going to be there the whole time he was there.

Brenda: Yeah,

yeah, I agree with joy being a choice. I went.

Marty, when you mentioned 2nd Chronicles 20, I went there because it's 2 Chronicles 2015 is one of my memorial stone verses where it says, do not be afraid or discouraged, because this vast number, for the battle is not yours, but God's.

But going on in 2 Chronicles 20,

in verse starting in verse 20, King Jehoshaphat makes a choice.

He goes out and he says to Judah, Hear me, you inhabitants of Jerusalem. Believe in the Lord your God, and you will be established.

Believe in his prophets, and you will succeed.

Then he consulted with the people and appointed some to sing for the Lord and some to praise the splendor of his holiness.

When they went out in front of the armed forces, they kept singing,

give thanks to the Lord for his faithful love endures forever.

And so I love that King Jehoshaphat made a decision and he stood firm in that decision.

And everyone else followed his lead.

And his decision was to stand in joy and believe what the Lord had said, that the battle wasn't theirs, but it was the Lord's.

Marti: I love that story, too. Because in my life, there have been times where I've been so desperate.

I've chosen the wrong path. I've been super desperate. I've called out to the Lord,

and in my despair,

he comes along and takes care of me so well that my joy is that much greater because I've been through that process. I've watched the Lord work. I've chosen faith.

I've chose to trust the Lord.

It's that much more joyful when you come out the other side and you choose that joy.

And it was King Jehoshaphat. I said the wrong king earlier.

So thank you for correcting me on that.

Brenda: Oh, you're welcome.

Jan: But the idea of, you know, looking sunshine,

it's like the contrast between our dark places and the sunshine,

you know, even if you're looking,

in a physical sense, in the winter,

and it's gloomy and it's dark and whatever, and then that little bit of sunshine pops. Pops out like.

Like that's your little God moment to go like,

oh, you know.

Marti: Yeah.

Jan: And it's a huge contrast. It's enough. That just restores your soul.

Marti: Right. I used to live in California, and for the past almost 10 years, I've lived in Oregon at very rainy part of Oregon.

And I can attest to the fact that although I like the rain, when the sunshine does come out,

your whole being just gets uplifted.

Brenda: Yeah, I hadn't thought about that contrast,

Jan and Marty, to your point, about just your whole being being uplifted,

even.

So one of my. I learned this from one of my friends that and I'm sure she. She heard it on a podcast or something about sleep, but that when we wake up in the morning,

the best thing to do is to go and look at the sun for like five minutes because it helps reset or set our circadian rhythms.

And then also to go out at noon and do the same and to go out at the end of the day and. And do the same. But I was also thinking of the sun as the son, Jesus,

that when we are intentional about looking at him and looking to him, then we're more likely to be in that place of joy and to stay in that place of joy,

because when we look upon him,

he is lovely, you know, he's all of those things.

And so that helps us to just reorient into a place of joy that is so good.

Jan: And the radiance, you know, the radiance of Jesus,

you know,

when God fills the temple and that whole radiance is there, it's, you know,

and what does it do? It just. It stops you. What happens? It stops you for a moment or it stops you in your track. It's like puts a reset on things when you have that right in that dark spot and then all of a sudden you have the sunshine and then it's,

you know, or that God moment or whatever, and it's resets you.

Brenda: Yeah, yeah.

Marti: Well, as you're talking, Jan, I was thinking about Moses,

how he went up on the mountain and he said, lord, I just want to. I just want to take a look at you.

And the Lord had him hide in a rock and pass by him. Because the Lord's brilliance, the Lord's sunshine is so shining, we can't take it as humans.

And he came down and the people like,

he just shone.

He was sunshine just being in the atmosphere of the Lord passing by him.

He shone for a long time after that. So that's a bit of joy and sunshine, too.

Jan: Well, and heaven. There's not going to be, you know, stars and sun and moon. It's going to be Jesus, the radiance, you know.

Marti: And, Brenda, to your point, I was thinking about how in my very early 20s,

I was saved, but I didn't really have a relationship with the Lord.

And then in my 30s, I decided to have like a very.

Well, I decided to have a relationship with God, and it changed everything.

But it took me a while to realize that if I am not in his word on a. On a very constant schedule,

like looking at the sunshine for five minutes, looking at the sun,

Jesus sunshine regularly by reading his Word,

then it is my default to go into darkness. So it is a choice. As a human, I just plummet if I'm not looking at that sun all of the time, several times a day, praying unceasingly,

doing the things that it tells me to do.

Brenda: Yeah,

that's sobering and yet and so reflective. Right. When you said that your default would be to go into darkness if you're not.

And I. And I think it is for all of us if we're not in the Word, and if we're not looking at Jesus,

then it's easier for the enemy to get a hold of us and to pull us into a dark pit.

Marti: Yeah, definitely.

Jan: So true. What about.

What about the joy of the Lord? I mean,

that means if we. If the Lord. If the joy of the Lord is our strength,

that joy comes from the Lord.

Right. So God is joyful that he wants to gives us those portions of.

But I was just. You know,

one of my favorites is a Zephaniah 3:17.

Right.

For the Lord, your God is living among you. Well, right there. Isn't that amazing?

We kind of lose sight of that.

He is a mighty Savior. He will delight in you with gladness,

with his love. He will calm all your fears. He will rejoice over you with joyful songs.

Marti: He's so beautiful.

Jan: Ooh, right.

Brenda: Yeah.

Marti: Here's another one, a really good one. Psalm 103 says,

Let all that I am praise the Lord with my whole heart. I will praise his holy name.

Let all that I am praise the Lord. May I never forget the good things he does for me.

He forgives all my sins and heals all my diseases.

He redeems me from death and crowns me with love and tender mercies.

He fills my life with good things.

My youth is renewed like the eagles.

Wow.

Wow. He does it all for us.

He takes such good care of us.

Jan: That's because he made us.

Brenda: Yeah. That's amazing.

Marti: And he takes good care of us. Like, we can hold this in our heart regardless of the darkness around us or the circumstantial distress that we have through our lives from sickness or war or.

I'm thinking of the Apostle Paul who was in jail getting ready. He knew he was going to die. He was getting ready to die. And he wrote his spiritual son, Timothy,

a letter that said,

keep going.

Keep strong.

Stay strong in the Lord.

That's gotta take some serious joy in your heart to tune out living in a prison cell for as long as he did,

knowing that his death is imminent,

to just stop all that circumstantial stuff and move towards the love of the Lord which loves his people,

to loving his spiritual son and encouraging him.

It's. There's no other way to do something like that without putting your faith in the Lord, without trusting the Lord.

Jan: And I think that says that it's, you know, it's not.

It's not what you see outside of you. That's not what your joy is.

It just.

It always has to come back to your inner being of knowing that, you know,

that God is there and he is a joy. And because he is the joy, I can be joyful regardless of what I see.

Yeah.

Brenda: I think one of the things that I've been thinking about concerning joy is,

you know, based on that scripture, the joy of the Lord is my strength.

I started to ask myself, am I receiving your joy?

Like, am I?

Because receiving can be hard for us,

especially when we're used to serving. And you know, for me, I'll speak for myself, just being works based.

And so I just started to ask the Lord for grace to receive his joy, to receive his love,

so that I could truly be walking in his strength rather than my own.

Jan: I mean, too, there's sometimes when we're in a dark spot that we don't want joy.

Brenda: Yeah.

Jan: I mean, we're there so deep in it, it's like. And can't see our way out. And we're not sure we really want to accept that joy.

Brenda: True.

Marti: Goes back to the choice that we were talking about earlier. You have to choose it. And it's.

Sometimes we don't choose it.

I mean, I've had a whole lifetime of choosing the wrong.

I've had a whole lifetime of making stupid, dumb choices.

But that makes it, when I choose God, all the sweeter.

All the sweeter.

And when I was thinking about talking about God's sunshine,

I looked up a quote from AW Tozer that I remembered years ago.

He wrote, the people of God ought to be the happiest people in all the wide world.

People should be coming to us constantly and asking the source of our joy and our delight.

And Jan, what you're saying is the whole world lives in their circumstances,

lives in the sin of this world, lives in the darkness of this world.

But when we are the happiest people in the wide world, even around our circum, you know, all of the circumstances that are happening in our life that is unique,

that is special,

that is.

That calls people to see that there's something about us that is different.

We have that Joy and that delight and it's. People want that.

So it's important for us to choose the joy not just for our own heart,

but so that we can be light for other people.

Show them what the sunshine that we swallow really does for us and can do for them.

Jan: Yeah. And prior to this, Brenda and I were talking. She had brought up watching the episode with John, your husband John,

and where he said just like he wishes he was in that hard space again with his cancer, just because that's where he was joyful and was close to God.

So true.

Marti: That blew my mind when I heard him say that God is, He's so powerful and our relationship with him is everything.

It supersedes cancer, it supersedes chemo, it supersedes war torn nations, it supersedes it all.

We'll give it all up to have a relationship with the Lord.

Yeah, that was a really sweet moment when he,

when he told us that, wasn't it?

Jan: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Brenda: And it came through on video too. So, yeah,

Jan: let's talk. We have a few minutes left. Let's talk about the joy,

the difference you felt or the joy you had when you first really encountered God.

What was that like, you know, or even comparing it maybe to Pentecost, you know, that, that whole like,

whew.

Marti: Brenda, tell us your story.

Brenda: Well, I'm glad Jan said when you first really encountered God,

because,

you know,

I, I,

in my salvation moment,

you know, I, I made a choice, but I, I can't say I felt like, oh, you know, Holy Spirit is within me.

Um, and so I was just thinking of when did I first really encounter God? I'll, I'll talk about when I first really felt super close.

And it was when I was going through difficulty and I had no other choice and no other person to look to other than God,

other than Jesus. And so, you know, I would spend hours in prayer and hours on my face or crying or reading my Bible.

But that was,

that was when I felt closest to him,

was just in the midst of that difficulty, much like your husband Marty.

And it was from there where I was even more intentional about just going deeper. My relationship with the Lord and seeking his face and just wanting to be in his presence.

So, yeah, it started,

it started in a season,

in a desert season, so to speak.

Marti: Yeah,

so often the case.

Yeah,

I would say with me choosing joy and having that joy has always been a super choice for me.

Like,

I have to choose that. That's not my nature at all.

I'm naturally a downtrodden Eeyore that looks at the cup half empty.

And the Lord has had to do a mighty work in my life on a constant basis. It's not a one time thing or a thing that just like was a light bulb that came on in my head.

It's been a constant choice for me to remind myself the Lord has forgiven me of my sins,

which I don't understand,

but I can have joy over that.

He promises it in his word like we talked about.

He. For he forgives my sins, he gives me joy,

he heals me.

He does all of these things that I can choose to have joy about.

Jan: Yeah,

yeah. I think the most impactful time for me that I think back in is when I was at a women's retreat and,

and the whole place got filled with the Holy Spirit and it was just so powerful.

I mean,

you could touch it.

I didn't have words to describe what it was like, but it was like that was a moment that was definitely a memorial,

you know,

to cling onto and go, yes, that presence was real. He was just so strongly there and,

and continues to be, you know. Yeah, it's up to us to reach out. Right?

Marti: Jan, I was thinking about last summer. You and I were, we were in a group of people and we were praying and singing to the Lord and just kind of prophesying and praying the Lord's giftings over someone.

And you laid your hands on him and you,

you prayed for him and you,

you broke out in tongues.

And the weight of the joy over that room, it was, it was a heavy joy.

It was one of the most beautiful moments I've ever had.

I was watching the Lord work through you into someone who has been called to serve him. And boy, was that a joyful moment. The whole room was filled with the Lord's glory.

Jan: I think we might need to be a little more intentional about that more often.

Marti: Bring it. Let's do it.

Jan: Let's bring it on. Let's.

Oh, we are almost out of time. But I just want to encourage listeners, watchers, those who are being a part,

just think about your joyful times and share those with us because we would be encouraged to hear sometimes when you were most joyful or where you, where God rescued you from something and brought you joy, or answered a long time prayer and brought you joy or just, just your ideas even about sunshine.

We would love to hear from you about any of those insights or favorite scriptures, your favorite psalm or something like that. That would just be awesome. So you can always reply here on the podcast or you can on the sub, sub stack,

put your little comments in there with those as well. And we would love to hear from you. Right,

right,

right,

right.

I was going to say my other favorite one, of course, is rejoice in the Lord always,

Philippians 4:4 and Psalm 9:1 and 2 says, I will praise you, Lord, with all my heart. I would tell of all the marvelous things you've done. I will be filled with joy because of you.

I will sing praises to your name almost high.

Marti: Amen. That's definitely swallowing sunshine.

Brenda: Right?

Jan: Right. Okay. I'm always going to have that vision

Marti: now, isn't that bright? I love that.

Jan: I love that. Okay, thank you so much, ladies, and we will be back again another time.

Brenda: Thanks, Jan. Thanks, Marty.

Marti: Bye, my friends.

Jan: Okay, bye.