What the Fire Took, and What It Left

God does not truly own a man until He has tested a man.

Anybody can say I've given my life to God. Millions do say it. The phrase doesn't even appear in Scripture — it's a slogan our generation is fond of, but to describe the average North American Christian as somebody who's actually ‘given his life away’ is a stretch of the imagination.

There are multitudes who believe in Jesus. Multitudes saved by Jesus. Very few in all of history have actually surrendered everything to Jesus, and not one of them arrived there without being tested in ways they didn't enjoy.

Nobody drifts into deep devotion. Nobody wakes up one morning and accidentally finds himself fully yielded. Isaiah called it a highway of holiness — a road the unclean never travel and fools never wander onto by mistake.

Surrender is a place you only reach on purpose.

I know that because I watched my wife do it, and it cost her more than it cost me.

The House She Never Got To Build

When we bought the 160 acres we call The Altar, we did it in obedience. We knew God wanted a place where people would come and encounter Him. Of course we said yes.

But if I'm brutally honest, tucked somewhere deep in both our hearts was a quiet hope that we'd get to live there too. We'd just moved our family of seven into a small three-bedroom townhouse to make the purchase of The Altar possible. The Altar is a beautiful piece of land — rolling hills, big trees, views that stop you. We figured God could have 159 acres and we'd tuck a house in a back corner. One acre for us. It seemed reasonable. It seemed fair.

For a year and a half we walked that property looking for the spot. We pictured the house, the yard, the kids tearing around on quads, a Christmas tree in the window.

And every hill, every clearing, every perfect bend in the woods somehow felt wrong.

Then one day Cara came back from a prayer walk in tears. I asked her what happened, and through sobs she said, "He's not going to let me build on that land."

"Who's not?"

"God. Everywhere I go, every good spot I find, He says no. It feels like He wants the whole thing for Himself."

She wasn't angry. She wasn't rebelling. She was heartbroken.

And you have to understand this wasn't the first time. In 2014 we'd bought a beautiful lot on the edge of town backing onto a treed reserve, and then the recession hit and building costs exploded and wisdom said walk away, so we sold it. I still remember her face months later when we drove past and somebody else's house was going up on it.

Then we found forty acres four minutes outside town. Put down a ten-thousand-dollar non-refundable deposit. Took the kids out there, walked the trees, picked the house spot, ate wild raspberries, took pictures of all seven of us grinning on "our new land."

And then one day, while I was out there praying and pouring oil on the four corners the way wacky intercessors do, I heard the Lord say walk away. I called Cara — she happened to be sitting with our banker at that exact moment, and they'd just found an old reclaimed well site on the title and refused to finance it.

We lost the ten grand and she lost another dream.

So by the time God told her there'd be no house at The Altar, there were layers of loss already stacked up in her.

And I watched her say: "Yes, Lord. We'll find another place to live."

Then for seven days straight she walked the perimeter of that quarter section. Two miles a day, crying, laying the whole thing down as an offering. Her own private Jericho march. Every lap, she gave the dream up again.

Not ceremonially. Not poetically. Actually. Internally. Painfully. Fully.

Alabaster Worship

That's what I call it, and I should probably explain the term.

Mary of Bethany came to Jesus carrying an alabaster jar of perfume worth a full year's wages. Stop and let that number land. Whatever a year's wages is for you — hold that figure in your head for a second. It'll put a knot in your stomach. Your brain will start hunting for the exit.

She didn't drizzle a little on Him. She broke the jar and poured out every drop. A year's income, gone, in one reckless act. She wasn't making a scene. She was sending a message, and He got it: You are worth everything to me!

And while the fragrance was still filling the room, the criticism started. Judas went first. Why this waste? That could have been sold and given to the poor.

He sounded righteous. He wasn't. He didn't care about the poor — he was the treasurer, and a thief. The man carrying the offering bag called her offering a waste.

Jesus defended her immediately, the way He always defends the lovesick giver.

But Jesus, aware of this, said to them, "Why do you bother the woman? For she has done a good deed to Me." — Matthew 26:10

He didn't call it a wise investment. It wasn't one. He didn't even call it generous. He called it good — and then He said something He never said about anybody else in Scripture:

Truly I say to you, wherever this gospel is preached in the whole world, what this woman has done will also be spoken of in memory of her. — Matthew 26:13

So if you've ever wondered what actually moves the heart of God, look at her. Nobody ever did it better. Her worship wasn't polite or sensible or calculated. It was reckless. Arguably irresponsible. And heaven built her a memorial.

When's the last time you gave Jesus something that hurt?

That's what Cara did on those seven laps. It was beautiful and it was horrible. To God it was a kiss.

And just when it seemed He couldn't ask for more, He did.

The Fire

After she surrendered the dream of ever living at The Altar, she had no plan B. None. Her heart was raw.

Then I got a strong sense we were to buy the quarter section across the highway. It was stunning — rolling hills, meadows, a creek winding through the woods, and thousands of towering spruce that looked like they'd been planted for us. It looked to me like God's gift to my wife.

At first she wouldn't even consider it. It would take every penny of our savings just to buy the land, never mind build, and honestly part of her had quit hoping. Hope hadn't treated her well.

But I kept declaring it, and slowly her hope came back up. Before long she was walking that land dreaming out loud.

We bought it. We picked the house spot, perched above a canyon with the creek running through it. I calculated I could shoot an elk off the back porch at four hundred yards, which in my mind confirmed this was clearly the perfect will of God for our lives.

We took the kids out there over and over — quads through the woods, swimming in the creek. I watched my wife cry happy tears watching her children play on that land, with a look on her face that said maybe God does love me after all.

I hate telling this next part, so I'll go fast.

On May 4, 2023, the wildfire came. The whole town evacuated. We sat in an Edmonton hotel watching an orange blob crawl across a satellite map, heading straight south at Drayton Valley, with winds strong enough to throw sparks a kilometre.

Then the wind shifted — suddenly, dramatically, west instead of south. Everyone called it a miracle, and for the town it absolutely was.

That shift pointed the fire directly at our two quarter sections.

It hit our future home quarter like a blowtorch. Every tree Cara had fallen in love with was consumed. The flames stripped the branches off and left nothing but blackened poles. Scorched earth, smoking stumps, silence. Her dream, ripped away one more time and reduced to ash.

Then the fire jumped the highway into The Altar.

And that's where it got strange.

The fire tore across the open grass and burned every inch of ground — but when it hit the treeline, the trees wouldn't burn. A few got singed. Almost every tree visible from the highway stood there green and untouched over black smoking ground.

It burned right past my prayer cabin without harming it. Not a scorch mark, except a small black smudge at the base of a tree six feet away.

It ran up to the worship stage and stopped two feet short.

It reached the baptismal tank where we'd baptized 281 people, and stopped two feet away, for no reason anybody can explain, leaving a black ring on the ground around it.

The only part of The Altar it destroyed was the back section — peat moss and tangled spruce we'd never been able to use for anything. A perfect place to dig a pond.

Everything precious to me was protected. Everything precious to my wife — the home quarter, her trees, her trails, even a guest cabin she'd built for visitors — was devoured.

And we had no insurance on any of it.

I stood there looking at a pile of ashes I had personally talked her into spending our life savings on, and I had nothing to say. How do you comfort somebody who's been knocked down that many times? How do you ask them to get up again?

So I Bought A Sawmill

Yes. Really.

The fire went through so fast that the branches burned but the trunks were still sound. And The Altar needed timber — for a worship barn, for cabins.

So my sixteen-year-old son Benny and a pack of his buddies loaded those blackened logs ont a mill I bought with about the last of my courage. One at a time, those ugly charred trees came out the other side as over 700 timber beams. Eight-by-eights and ten-by-tens.

We didn't get to choose the loss. We did get to choose what to spend it on, and we picked revival.

Those beams will be cabins where intercessors sleep when they come to pray. Dorms for youth. A timber-frame barn we'll worship in. Her home quarter became the material for a dwelling place for God.

The Week Of Crying, And Then The Jumping

I thought losing that land would kill my wife.

She cried for a week. Boy, did she cry. She let the kids cry too — they needed to mourn it.

Then after about seven days, Mom decided crying time was over. She called a family meeting, sat us all in a circle, and with tears still on her face said, "Alright. It's time to move on."

And then she did something I'll never forget.

She told us we were going to praise God. Not quietly. Not politely. She put worship songs on her phone and made every one of us jump. Literally jump up and down, shouting our thanks to Jesus for His kindness and His goodness in our lives.

We jumped. We cried. We laughed. We thanked Him — not for what we'd lost, but for who He is.

It was messy and loud and awkward and costly and beautiful.

Worship out of the ashes.

Since then, we have lived in a level of favor I couldn't have imagined. The gatherings exploded — not just in size but in power. Salvations multiplied. Miracles increased. The business grew. Doors opened that we never knocked on. God gave Cara and me the honor of directing the Canadian Firewall, a network of more than 25,000 intercessors praying for this country, with The Altar as its headquarters.

People tell me all the time that the favor on my life is wild. They're not wrong.

Almost nobody connects it to the crushing. They assume it's talent or strategy or personality.

It isn't. Favor like that is born in alabaster worship — the kind that breaks you open and wrecks you for a season.

One day I'll stand in front of the Lord and thank Him for all of it. And I have a funny feeling He'll smile and say, "Your wife won a lot of that, Steve."

Alabaster worship costs far more than we expect, and pays more than we deserve.

This is from my book Dependently Wealthy — the story of how a broke, insecure preacher who knew nothing about business learned what surrender actually costs, and what it's worth. Available in paperback and audio on Amazon.