You Really Believe That? Where Faith Comes In with Marti and John Darcangelo, Sister Mercy and Ed Johnson

If you are new here, welcome! I’m Jan Johnson, your host. I’m glad you’re joining us and I hope that by the end of this show you feel encouraged and strengthened. 

 Today is December 30, 2025, and as it’s the end of the year and a beginning of a new year, I wanted to start doing one episode a month that is more of a round table discussion on a topic.

So, this episode is the beginning of that.

Joining me today are my daughter Sister Mercy, my husband Ed, and friends Marti and John Darcangelo.

 Our topic is Faith, and bottom line, why we believe.

What leads us to believe in what others might call fairy tales of the Bible?

A talking donkey

A man swallowed by a whale and thrown up alive

People like Isaiah going to heaven who never died.

People like Jesus and Lazarus and some boy dying and rising again

1 Corinthians 1:18, 

"For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God."

1 Corinthians 1:23 adds:

"but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles."

There's also 1 Corinthians 2:14, which expands on this idea:

"The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit."

I’d love to hear your thoughts on the topic of Faith.

Why exactly do you believe?

Let me know in the comments.

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Transcript

Jan: Welcome, everybody, to this episode of Just Talking About Jesus.

My guests today are John Darcangelo with his lovely wife Marti and Sister Mercy and my husband Ed.

And we are going to talk about faith today.

So I wanted to do that because we just had Christmas,

and I'm just thinking about how much faith it takes to actually believe that God sent his son down and a virgin birth and angels,

the shepherds, and just the whole story of it. Like. Okay,

so I want to talk about.

Why would we even believe a fairy tale like that?

Who would like to start?

Sister Mercy?

Mercy: I didn't raise my hand.

Jan: I'm calling on Sister Mercy.

Mercy: Okay, so.

Well, I think this is interesting because I just finished taking a class and test my knowledge here about the theological virtues, right? So faith, hope and charity.

And so one of the things that is interesting, right? The object of all of those is God, but you're looking at them from different.

Like the material object of faith, hope, charity is God, right? But the formal object is the attributes of God.

So how are you looking? How is God in hope? How is God in charity? How is God in faith?

So charity is God, like loving God in himself, Right.

Hope is in his divine goodness.

But faith is looking at God as truth, spirit, specifically as first truth. Right.

And if truth is a virtue, or. Sorry, if faith is a virtue that resides in your intellect, right? And the object of your intellect is truth,

it corresponds that the object of faith is also truth. Right? So it's looking at God as truth in himself.

And why do we believe God? Why do we have faith?

Because he can neither deceive nor be deceived. Right.

It's not just like something you've come up with of your own accord or something that you even believe out of necessity. I mean, really, it's like you're. You're doing it because your trust is your faith in that.

The evidence, the credibility of the witness. And who is the witness? Christ himself.

Right. Like, who is it that you are really ultimately believing? You're believing Christ, who is truth.

Jan: Faith is the essence of things hoped for, the conviction of things not yet seen.

Ed: Well, I'd pitch in there on the birth,

the whole Jesus story. Not from where I'm at now, because we have everything that's in the Bible. We know about raising Lazarus from the dead, curing the lamb,

lame lepers,

whatever. But I really wonder if I was one of those shepherds.

I happened to be a shepherd.

If I was one of the sheep, conveniently.

Yeah. We watched a version of the Chosen the other night and you know, the sky lit up, whatever, but you didn't hear any angels or anything.

And so I. Yeah, I really wonder where I would have fit in then.

You know, now it's easier because you have all this history, but back then,

you know, the angels actually jumped out there and were singing and all that.

You know, that would be something that would certainly get my attention.

But, you know,

other than that, if there really wasn't the angels singing or whatever,

you know, would I go over there and see this baby and think, wow, here's the Masada laying in this crib and a,

you know, filthy.

Yeah. You know, a place that I lamb my ewes,

you know, and the same at the other end of the.

Of the story when to me, unless I actually followed Jesus around and saw him raise people from the dead and feed a crowd of 5,000 with a couple of loaves of bread and a couple of fish,

if I really experience that'd be one thing. But if I was just a Jewish person at the time and this Messiah is hanging on a cross,

you know, I don't know whether I would have been one that Sam crucified him, or would I have been a follower. And I think it'd be easy to. Or easier to be a follower, even for them.

It obviously was tough because John shows up at the crucifixion, but now the rest of them are. They're all hiding out and they were there and saw that stuff. So I don't condemn people at that time that,

you know, we're expecting a different kind of messiah and all of a sudden he's hanging on a cross.

I might have been one of those daughters myself.

I didn't mean to kill the whole discussion.

Jan: We're pondering.

Mercy: Mary pondered those things, right?

Jan: Well, even. Yeah.

Mercy: But in a way, really, though, it is your. Like, I know what you're saying of that, but like,

in a way it makes your faith, or I guess really our faith in general more profound now, because we didn't have that. Like, we didn't see Jesus walking on water.

We didn't see him raised from the dead. We didn't see him a little baby in Bethlehem, but we still believe.

So why is our faith deeper and why is it more profound? What do we base our faith on?

We didn't see it.

John: What if when we accept Jesus and we have the Holy Spirit as his gift,

my life's changed? So by faith,

my heart's changed and my actions have changed.

That's by faith. And I have faith in him because I've been transformed. I still have a long ways to go, still make mistakes. But I have faith in him that it's real.

And the Holy Spirit in me just convicts me. And I know it's true.

I know it's true.

Jan: Because you lived experience.

John: Yes, yes.

Marti: But you also have the Holy Spirit inside of you that is giving you a faith.

Like,

if it was just up to us,

like Ed. Ed was pondering,

we might not believe it, but we have help.

Mercy: You have the.

Marti: We have. We have the helper helping us with guiding faith.

Mercy: But that's like such a. Yeah, that's another thing that we talked about in this class that I took of, like,

what is the, the object of it, right? Is like, supernatural truths. It's not just, like, truth of, like. Yes,

I believe that there is Tillamook ice cream in the freezer. You know, like, that's great, wonderful. But what the. The actual, like, virtue of faith is,

is, like, for supernatural truths, right? And so, like, we are human. Like, we are not capable of our own volition of attaining that truth. We need that help. We need that supernatural help.

And that's in the form of grace, right? But like God, if God is the ultimate object of this, he's the ultimate end.

He's not going to just say, like,

figure it out. He's going to. Good luck, right? He's going to help. And he provides that through the Holy Spirit. He provides that through grace for us to be able to reach our supernatural.

And because us, by our own natural volition, we can't,

you know.

Jan: Well, and I think back to, I mean, how many places in the Bible were there things that were unbelievable, you know, I mean, a talking donkey, maybe.

Marti: A flood when there'd never been rain.

Jan: A flood when there's never been rain. And all the directions for how to build an ark when they may not even have had. What kind of tools I'm going to use to do.

Mercy: Yeah.

Jan: To do any of that.

You know, you think about,

I don't know, the Tower of Babel. All of a sudden everybody's speaking a different language, you know,

or Pentecost, when everybody's speaking different languages. What. What happened there? And, you know,

I mean, in your mind, you're thinking, oh, yeah, they must be drunk. But that doesn't make sense. That didn't happen.

How about Jonah?

Marti: Well, you also have to. When you thinking about all of those things,

you have to choose to believe them. You have to choose to have faith that these things really happened.

And we have the beautiful thing, like, Ed was talking about where we have a book that explains to us what has happened,

what is happening, and what is going to happen.

And that's a big reason for us, as in the age of Grace,

why we have our faith. Because we have this beautiful love letter from the Lord showing us it is a hundred percent accurate all of the time.

And so it's easy to have faith in something that is always a hundred percent accurate.

Mercy: And it takes like, you're right, like it is, like it is of the intellect, right? Like intellect knowing.

Like, okay, this is what it is. But it takes the will to choose,

you know, supported by grace. Like you can have this object in front of you, but like it doesn't do much good unless you're choosing it right? Like to choose the good to will the good right to ascent to it.

Marti: When Jan was asked to us to have a podcast on faith, I was thinking about how my whole life has changed because I've chosen to have faith.

You put your faith in something,

and I happen to put my faith in the truth.

And it just changed the way that I have peace.

It's changed the way that I know what my future is going to be.

It's changed the way that I can actually assimilate in my mind.

Oh,

Jesus did come down. I wonder what it felt like to Jesus to be a baby in a manger. Like, it must have felt interesting to him, to say the very least.

But I can believe all of that because I choose.

I choose to know that it's the truth and it.

Having the faith has changed my life.

So I wouldn't want to not have the faith.

Does that make sense?

Jan: Well, and he says, Jesus says I'm the way, the truth and the life.

You know,

I mean that's. I mean that's one of the foundations for me. I think my real.

If there was nothing else, like, the bottom line of why I believe is because nobody else has died and rose again and had that many witnesses to it.

Mercy: True.

Ed: And I think there's a lot of importance that,

that maybe Christians maybe don't see the value of, but the value of,

of the prophecies of the Old Testament.

You know, if you're not really into the Old Testament, if you're just into the New Testament,

you're missing out because look at all those promises, promises all the way through here telling you that this baby's gonna be born and what town and yeah, when aversion.

Yeah, yeah, it's. It was all prophesied for centuries before, like 600.

Mercy: Some of them,

like talk like, really the credibility, like, of the. Of the witness. Of. It is, like, if somebody comes in and tells you, like,

I don't know,

if a little kid comes in and says, there's ice cream in the freezer, you're like, okay, sure. Awesome.

But if your mom, who is a credible witness that you love and trust, right? And know to be trustworthy, shopped for you, that shopped for you, right, and says there's ice cream in the freezer, the credibility of the witness, right?

Like, you believe it. You're more likely to believe it because your mom said it. She went shopping, you know, you. You trust her, right? But, like, that is true. Like, when you look at, like, who is.

Who is the witness? Christ.

All of these times throughout the Old Testament, all these prophecies, all of these.

This prediction of what's gonna happen, right? Like, you see it being fulfilled. Like, it is trustworthy because it has been done. And he is the one who says it. He is the one who has fulfilled it.

Marti: Yeah.

Mercy: Okay.

My fun catechism story of the week.

I was teaching little first communion age, so, like, seven, eight, nine year olds, and we were talking about,

okay, so the Old Testament, like Isaiah and Hosea, and there's these prophecies, right? They're. They're. They're talking about the birth of Jesus, and he's gonna come. He's gonna come.

But, like, they didn't say how he was gonna come. Like,

they could have come. You know, they didn't know if he was gonna come as a king, as a president,

as the superhero. Like, they didn't know how he's gonna come. They just knew he was gonna come. But they didn't, you know, necessarily know he was gonna be this teeny little thing, whatever.

And so this one boy looks at me, and he says,

but, Sister Mercy,

Jesus is a king and a superhero.

Jan: And as you.

Mercy: The best superhero I know. Come on.

Jan: You're right, kid.

Marti: He is.

Jan: He is. Okay.

Mercy: I'll get that.

Jan: I'm gonna edit this. Just a minute. Oh, no, I just want to pause it because I wanted to grab something.

Marti: You have lots of notes, I have lots of nuts.

Jan: Oh,

we go. Okay,

so there's a gal that I follow in Subsack, and her name is Dr. Shaniaka.

And she said, faith is in faith until faith is all you have left.

So have you seen any instances in your life that maybe that would have seemed true to you?

Mercy: Say it again.

Jan: Faith isn't faith until faith is all you have left. Bottom of the barrel.

John: Well, I can contest to that had cancer two years ago and throat cancer.

And when you're. And my wife took good care of me, that isn't it. But when you're there on your bed and it's just you and God and there's nothing else, you're.

You're just one on one and you need him and the world is not around, which is very nice.

You have to have faith in him and it's the bottom.

You're fighting for everything and you're just one on one with him. And it is so amazing that faith.

And I miss it because now that I'm well,

I've let some of the world come back in and it's sad.

I miss hanging out, being on the bottom, having nothing else but Jesus. And now I've added other stuff and to be honest, it's very sad.

But God still has a purpose and I'm doing the best I can to explain to people that he is amazing and we need him and I still love him and need him every day.

Jan: I think that is true that every time.

I mean,

what brings you closest to God is when you're in the midst of turmoil and of any kind. I mean physical or relationship or financial or whatever else, you know, when you're at the bottom, that's like,

like that's what you're grasping onto. And why is that? Because we believe that he has everything,

he has it in control and he knows what's going on and he has a plan that it's all working into.

And that has to be faith because otherwise what would you be grabbing onto,

you know?

And that's where reading the Bible and knowing what the promises of God are,

you know, I'm never gonna leave you or forsake you. What else? I mean,

you know,

I know those plans.

Marti: Yeah.

Mercy: Yeah.

Ed: Well, I could tell my.

Unfortunately, I.

I was married once before,

got divorced at the time.

I had two kids by birth and two that I'd adopted.

And we went,

yeah, did the court routine and everything and it was not pleasant. And at the end of the custody hearing, the judge gave the two boys who were my birth boys to my wife,

gave her custody.

And,

you know, that about broke my heart.

And the first thing I did is as soon as I got out of the headquarters, I immediately went up to the church and saved my soul before God. And then,

you know, I just had to have faith in the long run. Things were gonna freak out. Without that faith, I.

Who knows, I could end up alcoholic or whatever. I don't know.

I read my Bible A whole lot more after that and just depend on God's work things out.

And every day I do surrender Novena.

Novena is a nine day prayer thing, but I do it all year round, continuous,

and part of it is just a one sentence.

Oh my Jesus,

I give my heart.

Mercy: To you and may Jesus, I surrender.

Ed: All you have to do, surrender everything. You have to take care of it and then you have to have faith that he is going to take care of it. Otherwise you're just saying words.

Mercy: It's a different thing to say it every day, a different thing to believe it.

Ed: Yeah,

yeah,

I'm human and there's times where something isn't going right and do I just sit back smiling, dear, dear,

no,

I get upset and then I have to question you. I really have faith that I'm surrendering every day or you know, because I'm telling them, they just take care of it.

Only I jump in there and try to get it right, muddle things up instead of.

Yeah. And one of the examples in this novena is that it's like a little kid saying, mommy, Mommy, I need you to help me do this. And the little kid just goes ahead, doesn't screws it up or you go to the doctor and instead of letting the doctor analyze the situation and come up with a solution that you tried to tell the doctor,

yeah, here's what I need you to do.

Jan: So,

but going back to your boys,

if you think about where they're at now and their relationship with you now,

you know,

it's kind of like as adults they've made up for the lost time.

Ed: Yeah.

Jan: It'S beautiful. Yeah. Another little quote was real faith doesn't come with plan B's. Lord, Plan A is you and you alone.

Mercy: But we were just talking about this the other day of how like, like what a woman of faith, what a woman of courage, right? Like she didn't, she completely, totally entrusted herself to Christ and that's it.

You know, Christ says, okay, go, I want you to found in this country and do this thing and start this orphanage like, okay, great, you know, I mean she left like a total woman of faith.

She was part of a different religious congregation when God told her to start her own, to start the missionary charity, right.

She completely left her other order and was completely by herself, totally, you know, like not dependent on anyone or anything.

And they ask her like, you know, don't do it, don't do it, don't do it. You know, but she said like, okay, I know that God has done this and he's called me to do this.

Therefore, he's going to provide the way. So when every single thing turned against her and no one believed her, that, like, it was actually inspired by God. Right.

She completely trusted in him and depended totally on him to be able to provide for. You know, it's like you have made this promise, God, and I'm trusting that you're going to provide because you said you would.

And that's it.

You know, it's jumping total, you know,

blind. Like, total blind. But, like, really,

I know who it is that I trust, and I trust God, and I know that he will provide for me. And I mean,

clearly, look what he has done in her life and the lives of so many that have been impacted by her.

Jan: Philippians 1:6.

It's placing everything on the altar with confidence that he who has begun a great work in you will carry it to completion until the day of Christ.

Marti: I think about how blessed we are to have a God that has such kindness,

like always. I know he has my best interest.

He will never be a God of hurt or of destruction or he'll always have the very best for me.

And that's. That's a huge bonus to have faith in a God that's so good,

that gives someone a promise and then follows through.

Regardless of circumstances,

he always makes it to the good.

What a God.

Ed: And I got a second chances.

Marti: Yes.

Ed: Third and fourth and fifth.

Seven times 77.

No matter how much we screw up, and you look through history constantly, man messes everything up and he still hangs in there.

As long as you come back and say,

sorry, I screwed up for him.

Marti: Yeah.

Mercy: He welcomes us back because his greatest attribute is his mercy.

Jan: Oh, I see how you worked that one in there. Second Corinthians, five, seven. We walk by faith, not by sight.

John: That's a hard one sometimes, not knowing what he has for us. We like to see. I like to see what's coming or where I'm going.

Jan: Well, even, like with, you know, with cancer, any kind of physical thing going on, you know, it's like, is this.

You know, it may not be that I'm gonna make it through.

Mercy: True.

Jan: You know, I mean, it doesn't. There's no.

There's nothing set in stone that just because you love God, he's gonna heal you,

you know?

But the other thing is that if I don't. Even if I don't, I still know that he's going to take me through.

He's going to be right by my side, and he's going to, even on my lows, he's still going to love me and care for me and wrap his arms around me and,

you know.

John: Well, kind of when we were going through it, I was going through it and she was with me. I always said, well, this is an opportunity. God is making this an opportunity for us to tell people about Jesus.

So let's figure it out. Who can we talk to or pray or. Yeah, you know, it's not about us. I mean, we're going through it, but I looked at it as a opportunity to tell people.

So it was,

it wasn't fun, but it was. There's a reason and I hope we touch somebody on the way or something happened that,

yeah, I don't know, made a difference somewhere.

I think that's probably why. I mean, there's a trial. We have trials for reasons.

Marti: And I think having faith too is such a wonderful peace inducing attribute,

fruit of the Holy Spirit.

Because when you have faith, you know where you're going.

You know that you'll never be alone.

You know, I remember thinking if, if John goes to heaven today,

I'll be okay because I have my Lord.

If John lives another day, I'll be okay because I have my Lord.

That's a faith in my Lord,

not my faith in a circumstance or a person or a.

Something worldly.

It's. It grounds you. And faith is,

that's what faith is. It just makes you okay because you believe God is who he says that he is.

And if he decided to come and be born in a manger.

Jan: Okay,

well you go back to Hebrews 11,

that whole.

All the men of faith,

you know, Abraham and you know, all the way down the line of everything, you know, they believed and so God counted it as righteousness. And you know,

that whole list of.

Marti: I was thinking about that,

about faith and the hall of faith and Abraham. And I was wondering what Sarah must have thought when Abraham said, okay,

get up, let's go.

Like,

did she have faith to just be okay with that or did it freak her out? I mean, we don't know,

but it all worked out in the end. But I was thinking about that like,

you know, one person's faith can impact but doesn't necessarily impact another.

Jan: What about Joseph? I mean, there's somebody had to have some pretty deep faith to be going, excuse me, what?

Marti: How many years am I going to have to be in prison?

Mercy: Oh, I was thinking the other Joseph.

Jan: No. Well, I was thinking that Mary and Joseph,

I mean, if Gabriel hadn't gone to Joseph of Course, that's another thing with God. I mean, he knew that he had to send an angel to both people to confirm that this was really the plan.

Mercy: He knew it was necessary for them to. Yeah.

Jan: I don't know if Ed would have believed me if I said, well, guess what? Maybe not.

Ed: I'd have better had an angel.

Marti: Yeah, right.

Jan: Yeah. Without faith, it's impossible to please him. And faith is not theoretical. It's lived first Timothy 6:15.

Mercy: So true.

Jan: But I think that's true, too. What you were saying is that people, we are other people, are watching us to see. I mean, our faith strengthens other people.

Ed: Yep.

Jan: You know,

the strength of those characters in the Bible strengthens us. You know, I mean, real people,

real things that happen, you know,

and reading about that and us telling our stories and whatever, is all,

well, think about.

John: Noah building an ark. And I don't know how many people are on the earth, but came by him, mocking him, and he had faith.

Never seen rain before, building a contraption, the ark that he has. No,

but it's faith on God told me, and we're going to do this.

But all the people. I mean, that.

That's huge.

Marti: Yeah.

John: That amazes me, that faith right there.

Jan: Yeah.

Ed: I don't know.

John: There's faith. I mean, that's.

Mercy: Yeah.

Jan: I think there's also, you know, once you've gone through a situation where you needed to really put the faith in action, whatever. You look at something like Jonah,

he goes through getting swallowed by a whale and spat on the ground,

and then you go and. And get mad that God saves the people. It's kind of like,

I knew you were gonna do this.

Mercy: How dare you be merciful.

Marti: Right.

Jan: So. So it's like, where is your. Where's your connection to that faith moment, to lived experience in life later on and what's, you know, what happens.

Marti: It's always better to go through a situation believing the Lord than freaking out and not believing the Lord too. Like,

it tends to go better. Yeah. The more you live, the more you realize if I.

If I can walk through this with faith,

the end will be so much better than if I walk through without faith.

Jan: I don't even know if it's the end that's so much better. I think it's.

Marti: It's everything.

Jan: It's. The walk is so much better.

Marti: Yeah.

Jan: Yeah.

Mercy: Truth.

Jan: Well, this has been really interesting.

I think it's been a good discussion, you know, just to see different angles of it and whatever. So I would like to know from viewers or listeners about your stories of faith and what.

Where God's been in that and just your thoughts.

So thank you for being here.

Thank you, Marty.

Marti: Thank you, Jan.

Jan: Thank you, Ed. Thank you, Sister Mercy. And thank you, John.

Ed: Thank you.