Welcome to Voices from the Desert, where we explore historic Christianity, the journey of the desert, and how God meets us in the deepest deserts of our hearts. In this episode, we are joined by the Steve Stewart, founder of Impact Nations, based in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Steve's journey from a conservative church upbringing, encountering the Holy Spirit during the Charismatic Renewal, to launching a global missions organization is nothing short of inspiring. Was it all fun and games or were there many valleys on they journey?
Steve's narrative is filled with unexpected twists and turns, from leading spiritual revivals to battling through personal deserts of doubt and physical challenges. Through it all, Steve's passion for rescuing lives—spiritually, educationally, economically, and medically—shines through. He shares stories of Impact Nations' transformative work, from freeing children from sex slavery to providing sustainable meals and clean water to thousands in need around the world.
For more about Impact Nations, Steve Stewart, and their Journeys of Compassion, visit: https://www.impactnations.com/
For more about Murray Dueck, visit: https://www.samuelsmantle.com/
For more about Joshua Hoffert, visit: https://www.windministries.ca/
Welcome to Voices from the Desert, where we explore historic Christianity, the journey of the desert, and how God meets us in the deepest deserts of our hearts. In this episode, we are joined by the Steve Stewart, founder of Impact Nations, based in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Steve's journey from a conservative church upbringing, encountering the Holy Spirit during the Charismatic Renewal, to launching a global missions organization is nothing short of inspiring. Was it all fun and games or were there many valleys on they journey?
Steve's narrative is filled with unexpected twists and turns, from leading spiritual revivals to battling through personal deserts of doubt and physical challenges. Through it all, Steve's passion for rescuing lives—spiritually, educationally, economically, and medically—shines through. He shares stories of Impact Nations' transformative work, from freeing children from sex slavery to providing sustainable meals and clean water to thousands in need around the world.
For more about Impact Nations, Steve Stewart, and their Journeys of Compassion, visit: https://www.impactnations.com/
For more about Murray Dueck, visit: https://www.samuelsmantle.com/
For more about Joshua Hoffert, visit: https://www.windministries.ca/
00;00;16;17 - 00;00;32;24
Murray Dueck
And Eric came back and said, Happened. Well, I'll I was in a meeting where I saw one or two people standing in front of me with catalogs and at the name of the other cataracts, literally. Okay.
00;00;32;29 - 00;00;38;03
Steve Stewart
I guess this type of event.
00;00;38;05 - 00;00;41;03
Murray Dueck
And it's not you do your time frame right?
00;00;41;06 - 00;01;11;14
Steve Stewart
I absolutely think that that's sort. Welcome, everybody, to Voices from the Desert. Desert. it's the beep. Beep. We got. Yeah.
00;01;11;17 - 00;01;13;11
Murray Dueck
I got it. That's great. You got.
00;01;13;13 - 00;01;13;20
Steve Stewart
Me.
00;01;13;21 - 00;01;19;11
Murray Dueck
That's our good friend Steve Stewart, who currently lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
00;01;19;11 - 00;01;42;18
Steve Stewart
So there's lots of Roadrunners and coyotes there. That's true. That's true. Yeah. I never saw those in British Columbia. And we don't we see maybe the odd coyote in Prince Edward Island, but it's not very often we see them out here. But I do remember traveling to central California when I was growing up, and we had Roadrunners left, right and center with my grandma.
00;01;42;18 - 00;01;55;02
Steve Stewart
Wow. Yeah. Yeah, that's right. In Death Valley, that's what they call it. That's why nobody wants to live there. That's the retired folks go there. Maybe that's why they called. I.
00;01;55;04 - 00;01;55;11
Murray Dueck
Guess.
00;01;55;16 - 00;02;18;08
Steve Stewart
It's either. So we're we're here with a new friend to me, an old friend to Murray, and. Yeah, this is Voices from the Desert. You guys, you are tuning in. You know what we're about. We like journeying through our stories and seeing how God intersects our forms. The deep desert of our heart, and how he terraform zoo. We are into his image.
00;02;18;16 - 00;02;34;02
Steve Stewart
And that that is diving into some of the patristic theology, the Desert fathers, contemplative literature, prophet C signs and wonders encountering God, all that kind of stuff. I don't know if you can really pay us down as a what. Murray You say your carries Menno docs, right?
00;02;34;04 - 00;02;36;01
Murray Dueck
Carries Menno doc said to Yeah.
00;02;36;07 - 00;02;53;09
Steve Stewart
Yes. I don't know if we can really peg down This is our theology, it's our theology is Jesus, and we just want more of Him. And I think we've found a fellow Jesus lover in the guy that we're going to interview today. So, Murray, why don't you introduce your friend Steve to us?
00;02;53;11 - 00;03;30;13
Murray Dueck
So I've known Steve. I think, since 92, and and he is a man of many hats right now, him and his wife, Christina. They run a ministry called Impact Nations, which literally is affecting the known world. And and I'm not I'm not hyping that at all to be to be honest. And just taking Jesus physical healing along with seeing people saved, along with training people in all kinds of jobs and water purification and getting kids out of sex slavery.
00;03;30;13 - 00;03;50;29
Murray Dueck
And, my goodness. You know, but but I think, like all of us, he started somewhere. And so we're going to talk a little bit about Journey first, because because he's become a kind of a fellow lover of kind of, you know, patristic theology, too. So for a guy who started out weirdo, charismatic like us, how did he end up there?
00;03;50;29 - 00;04;10;11
Murray Dueck
Still seeing all this physical healing and stuff from Jesus. So, you know, see, I'm just going to kick the ball back over to you and let's go back early days. We don't need to go too in-depth, but because a lot of our viewers, a lot of people listening to this are fellow charismatics on a journey wondering, where does this go?
00;04;10;14 - 00;04;24;09
Murray Dueck
Yeah. And to hear people that have had a journey go, okay, I relate to this and this and this and and it'll make I don't know. It'll help make where we're going more understandable, I think. So What would you think?
00;04;24;11 - 00;04;55;02
Steve Stewart
I'm delighted to be with you guys of just a thumbnail sketch. I came to Christ as a young married man. I didn't know a single Christian, and I just really had an encounter in my bedroom with with Jesus. It led me into a charismatic church. I wouldn't have known that. Charismatic church from a from anything, you know. Yeah.
00;04;55;04 - 00;05;17;28
Steve Stewart
And but I went there to meet somebody. They didn't show up, and I stepped into a whole new world with a great sense of homecoming. I remember that vividly. And it's getting close to 50 years ago. And I walked in and I had this deep sense, I'm home and I didn't mean that church. It was much more excited than that.
00;05;18;01 - 00;05;47;09
Steve Stewart
Anyway, so I, I was very involved in that church for ten years. They asked me to start in the end, helped start three Christian schools. And because I'd been an educator and you know, Murray, you have referred to it in the past, one of those mornings chapel time, you know, Christian schools have chapel time serving the Holy Spirit still.
00;05;47;11 - 00;06;13;04
Steve Stewart
Wow. And it went on all day. I everybody left except a few people, a few seniors. I got to get this right. It was like a normal morning, except the presence of the Lord, but starting to get strong. And the senior said, could we stay and just pray for a little bit? And I said, okay, sure. Never had a request like that.
00;06;13;04 - 00;06;31;27
Steve Stewart
Normally they'd be going to math or English or something, and they started to pray. And as they prayed, the presence of the Lord got stronger and stronger. It was a separate building where the chapel meant and people just started coming in from all over like students. And later the teachers told me that they'd put the hand up, say, I'm sorry, I've just got to go.
00;06;31;29 - 00;06;33;09
Steve Stewart
So they didn't know.
00;06;33;09 - 00;06;35;15
Murray Dueck
What was going on. They just had this touch.
00;06;35;15 - 00;07;09;25
Steve Stewart
It was the spirit of God. And it was it was so loud you couldn't hear yourself think. And then all of a sudden, you know, after about two or 3 hours because of the school actually once and Kate at 12 and and after two or 3 hours, some of these 11 and 12 starting laying hands on these these are people I used to try to get to say grace, you know, and they're laying hands and the power of God's fallen and then the next day and the next day and I won't go into all of it.
00;07;09;25 - 00;07;38;08
Steve Stewart
But other schools, staff from other schools heard they came, so forth. So that was that was pretty powerful. TIME And then in, I don't know, a couple of years after that, I encountered John when he did a big conference in D.C. in Burnaby. Yeah. And my voice and I cried through it. It was like we always hoped it would be like this, right?
00;07;38;10 - 00;08;11;24
Steve Stewart
We were in quite a rigid. It was. It was it had started very charismatic. There was a leadership change and it became less and less charismatic and more and more reform. And, you know, good people, bad theology. So we we hit vineyard and then we ended up moving to near Toronto and planted a church, a vineyard church, and then it just kind of exploded.
00;08;11;24 - 00;08;37;25
Steve Stewart
And then out of that, we had people coming 2 hours away every Sunday. And so we started planning churches in Ontario. In the midst of this, John Arnot, who was the pastor of the Toronto Airport Church, which was only 35 minutes away from me, it broke out there. We'd never seen anything like it. Right? Well, I had actually with the school thing.
00;08;38;01 - 00;08;55;26
Steve Stewart
Yeah. Yeah, right. Friends, I never seen anything like this. And, you know, and then it broke out. I never said a word to our church. I had a super massive encounter, actually, with John at the Catch the fire thing.
00;08;55;28 - 00;08;57;07
Murray Dueck
I would say about that.
00;08;57;15 - 00;09;23;28
Steve Stewart
But it was really early days. Really early days. Yeah. Yeah. You know, 175 people there and and I got whacked and smacked and everything. And I'm I'm a fairly, you know, this I'm a fairly conservative temperament guy, you know, and and I just I, I was on the floor and then I anyway on the Sunday I didn't tell our church what happened because I was so afraid of the this is.
00;09;23;29 - 00;09;25;25
Murray Dueck
Such a good story.
00;09;25;27 - 00;09;44;21
Steve Stewart
So 9:00 service was just heaven worship so everything's great and the power of God hits the place and we did not fall. Maureen you might remember this when we used to teach. It's there's no don't fall. But everybody fell down and there was nobody to.
00;09;44;24 - 00;09;51;24
Murray Dueck
You got to tell the part about the associate pastor on the stage and you're waiting to finish the announcement and he's frozen. Like.
00;09;51;27 - 00;09;52;21
Steve Stewart
It's not about that.
00;09;52;21 - 00;09;54;24
Murray Dueck
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Such a good.
00;09;54;27 - 00;10;22;18
Steve Stewart
Yeah, that's right. But you know what happened? This church where nobody had ever fallen there all over the ground and the 11:00 service was out in the foyer. And eventually they opened the doors and they walked in and they step over the bodies of the 9:00. wow. And within moments, they're on the ground. Wow. And I remember crawling, literally crawling in about 315 to the platform, pulling a microphone, bouncing.
00;10;22;18 - 00;10;46;01
Steve Stewart
I don't know what has happened here. I'm scared, silly, Right. But I couldn't tell them that. Yeah, I think we'll go home now. How's that for bravely? And then I said, if anybody wants to come back to pray or something tonight, I'll be here. As we were driving to the church that night, I said to my wife, I said, Why did I say that?
00;10;46;01 - 00;11;11;10
Steve Stewart
Nobody's going to come. We don't do Sunday nights anymore on the corner in our building was about 200 yards down the road. I come around the corner, there's a crowd in front of the door. Wow! The parking lots full. Then cars are parked on the road and they come. They already. This was only 4 hours later, right from right.
00;11;11;12 - 00;11;48;03
Steve Stewart
And already people had come from 2 hours away like that. So then we got out of there at about 330 in the morning. And then the next day people started flying in from the US and the next day from Europe. Time magazine in New York phoned me. It's like, What? What? And then I couldn't put them over to John on it because this was the this was what he'd hoped for and was in the middle of anyway.
00;11;48;03 - 00;12;09;22
Steve Stewart
So we had all that pardon me, and we kept hitting churches in the midst of all that. And then while this renewal was going on and more, you remember what it was like. I mean, they had 2 million people the first year in. I remember the days in Canada where if you had 350 people, you had a good sized church, right?
00;12;09;23 - 00;12;11;01
Murray Dueck
Yeah, absolutely.
00;12;11;03 - 00;12;38;20
Steve Stewart
So in the middle of it all, again, I want to keep it short. Yeah. Following the cloud when I was in B.C., you know, with the churches, with the schools and everything. And then the Lord spoke to me, said, I want you to go to Ontario and black churches. Well, I'd never even planted a geranium, but we went and we sold a car, we sold our house, sold the furniture, we didn't sell the boys and all.
00;12;38;22 - 00;13;11;27
Steve Stewart
And and then a couple of years of doing that, we had people and. And that's how that first vineyard started. Yeah, yeah. No, I'm in Ontario and we're kind of in the center of the universe right now. Right. People are flying in, you know, this career. Absolutely everywhere. And you do in the middle of it towards me. I want you to go back to Vancouver, which was statistically the least church city in North America.
00;13;12;00 - 00;13;16;10
Steve Stewart
And I want you to plant church. And it's like, say what?
00;13;16;12 - 00;13;17;29
Murray Dueck
Yeah, In the midst of this.
00;13;18;01 - 00;13;40;15
Steve Stewart
Yeah, right. But then he went out of his way with some real prophetic people that have had incredible voice into our lives, including Dr. John Whitehead on the crew member John Worrying. I mean, they came to us. We didn't say we're thinking. We should go. What do you think? You know, Kenny? Mark the part. I pick up the phone.
00;13;40;15 - 00;14;01;16
Steve Stewart
Hey, Mark, and we're talking and all of a sudden he's shouting, Go, go, go, go, go! And this kind of thing. So we. We sold everything and did it again. What a crazy man. Yeah. And and we planted a vineyard in Vancouver. I got to go quicker.
00;14;01;22 - 00;14;05;11
Murray Dueck
you're doing great. As far as Journey, this is really good. Yeah. Okay.
00;14;05;13 - 00;14;34;01
Steve Stewart
And so all in that church grew quickly, you know, in in B.C., planting a church in Vancouver. It had to grow quickly because it was so expensive you couldn't survive if you didn't have a congregation. And it sprung up quickly. Anyway. Okay, I'm going to fast forward and in 2000 and I'd always been involved in healing, right? It's just what I do.
00;14;34;02 - 00;14;52;02
Steve Stewart
I mean, last night I got to pray for an Episcopal priest and Jesus was gracious to him. And they, you know, it was like outside of their paradigm. Right? Right. I loved it. I prayed for him. He did real pain. He told the church. And suddenly and this it went something and I prayed for him. I said, no test set out.
00;14;52;07 - 00;15;00;12
Steve Stewart
As you know, we do more. It just sort of. And the Episcopal priest said, Holy cow. So I took that.
00;15;00;14 - 00;15;03;21
Murray Dueck
Hinduism.
00;15;03;23 - 00;15;31;08
Steve Stewart
Out in the midst of all this. Then we I heard about a thing that was just starting called the Healing Room. So I went down to Spokane, came back, we started healing wounds in Vancouver. And as you have alluded to before, it just began to multiply. And we ended up I think when I stopped doing that, there was 33 or 37 communities across the country, including us, and I was still pastoring, but I know it changed.
00;15;31;10 - 00;16;04;29
Steve Stewart
We started another church, a smaller church. It was quite lovely. And I another pastor, Lord, spoke to me one day when I was out walking in South Korea, contact this guy. And just so we got to pastors and I then what happened is in the 21 years ago I'm flying home from doing yes in Korea tired worked like a dog, which you always do if you preach in Korea.
00;16;05;02 - 00;16;28;29
Steve Stewart
And I'm just sitting there, probably read the magazine and the presence of the Lord came around me. This was one of the most pivotal moments of my life. But it you only know that when you look back. Right. And he said to me, I was 50 at the time. He said to me, I'll let you do what? What do you want to do the rest of your life?
00;16;29;01 - 00;16;56;07
Steve Stewart
I'll let you do anything. And again, I'm trying to give you the Reader's Digest compressed version. But what came out was, if I can do anything with the rest of my life. And up until then, of course, I had been a church planter. We planted a number of churches. That's not what came out of me. I said, I want to rescue lives and I said, I want to rescue them spiritually, educationally, economically, medically.
00;16;56;07 - 00;17;13;09
Steve Stewart
I want to rescue lives. I had no idea how to do that. Nobody but my wife, Christine, and I knew that happened. And within a few weeks I started just getting phone calls and emails from people, many of them I'd never heard of. Can you come here? Can you come there? I started to go while I was still pastoring, but we had this other co-pastor, right?
00;17;13;09 - 00;17;40;00
Steve Stewart
So again, that and then people started saying, Can I come with you? And one thing led to another and it became Impact Nations in I think we've worked in I think it's 26 or 27 nations. My wife's off Monday morning to Zimbabwe and then Uganda, and I'm off Wednesday or Thursday to India. So it's and and believe me, we're we're not mom and dad.
00;17;40;08 - 00;18;11;15
Steve Stewart
The the next generation is doing way more we can talk about that's wonderful. Yeah yeah I'm in so I eventually couldn't do both I couldn't pastor and it wasn't in my heart anymore. You know, honestly, I don't really care if we've got a great four Sunday school teacher and I should care. But I was dealing with getting food in the North Korea and, you know, the stuff that we ended up doing.
00;18;11;17 - 00;18;26;16
Steve Stewart
So I stopped pastoring in 2008 and since then it's just been full on impact Nations now that's the Bible. I will tell you two things quickly, and we can go back there if you want.
00;18;26;19 - 00;18;35;23
Murray Dueck
Well, I would love people to to you know, people listening. Impact Nations takes people like I guess you call them journeys of discovery, right. Where where they can come.
00;18;35;26 - 00;19;00;25
Steve Stewart
We've got one greatest compassionate. We still got we got 38 people going on this one to Malawi in April. And if anybody really wants to know, go to Impact Nations. That's great, because at the staff meeting today, I found out there's still a couple of places open. So wondering and we'll put a link to it. We'll put a link to Impact Nations in the podcast description so people can get a break easily from Malawi.
00;19;01;00 - 00;19;34;26
Steve Stewart
Just cooking with what we're seeing there. We've got ten teams at border crossings doing rescuing people from sex trafficking. Wow. We've we've got a safe house that's just been finished. Maybe this week we've got a tailoring school where there's 60 for the first six months. So for the next six months, because if they get skills and we give them what they need to either get employed or start their own home business, then they're not vulnerable to the traffickers because it's economics, right?
00;19;35;01 - 00;20;01;14
Steve Stewart
It's a single prostitution. It's nothing that with sex. It's about economics. Anyway, I'm really getting off track. You know what all we're doing in 2000, I went through a real desert time, a terrible desert time, actually, for two years, and then came out the other side in a moment and then had no idea. But it was only going to be a year and a half later that the Lord's going to say, What do you want to do the rest your life?
00;20;01;16 - 00;20;28;19
Steve Stewart
And then I had a significant and my you remember I had a significant heart attack in 2011 that sidelined me for nine months. And you started coming over and just spending time with me because it is it's 100% of the time when someone has serious heart attack. Depression is is a physical byproduct of it. Right. Besides all the.
00;20;28;26 - 00;20;40;17
Steve Stewart
no, I'm done, you know. Yeah. All that stuff. And, and it was then that you really started to introduce me to.
00;20;40;19 - 00;20;41;24
Murray Dueck
For training like the elevated.
00;20;41;27 - 00;21;10;08
Steve Stewart
Like known to it to, to patristic and so forth. So that was a huge shift for me. And then I got better and got back out doing stuff and, you know, leading teams and doing all that stuff. Right now, at this point in my life, I'm mainly about communication because as they see the next generation, my eldest son, who you know, Jim of, came out of the business world, our board hired him, not me.
00;21;10;08 - 00;21;33;18
Steve Stewart
I'm delighted with that. And he is just Impact Nations is just not straight up what we're doing now. I never could have imagined when I was leading, I was a ministry guy. Well, he grew up the son of a ministry guy. He grew up with kingdom activity all around him his whole life. But he had these great business skills.
00;21;33;18 - 00;22;01;24
Steve Stewart
He did very successful management training for the biggest tire retailer in North America and all that. Well, he took that skill into this, plus his own journey with the Lord, which is a very significant one. And now we're doing things that are quite marvelous. We're just another 724 children. We've gotten out of slavery in Brickyard in getting them into school.
00;22;02;00 - 00;22;50;16
Steve Stewart
They've never lived anywhere but inside the Brickyard. You know, they build their home, his prison, and neither of their parents or their grandparents. And now they're out there in school and getting an education, getting a meal. And I think this month we had 3000 child slaves. We've got free and educated. That's the stuff that I just love. You know, we've got we've got one of our goals this year for the end of last year was that our sister of all meals, in other words, teaching them organic farming and at scale that our sustainable meals would outpace our released meals and I mean, during COVID, we we had a year there was almost 2 million meals,
00;22;50;16 - 00;23;20;24
Steve Stewart
right. And it is important now, but we're still but we did it by the Lord. It by the end of the year, our sustainable meals has gone past our relief meals, but we still hand out whenever there's when there's earthquakes or there's typhoons or there's, you know, whatever cyclones, which is really how we got involved in Malawi for this journey of compassion, because we got in red after Cyclone Freddy, the largest, most sustained cyclone in history.
00;23;20;26 - 00;23;47;12
Steve Stewart
And in the area that we had just started to work in ours, 58,000 people were homeless and there was no no land to grow anything. There was nothing. And so that's why I talk about relief meals. So we get in. Yeah. Wow. Food for them, clean water. I think so far we've gotten clean water to we're pushing close to three quarters of a million people now, permanent clean water.
00;23;47;12 - 00;24;16;09
Steve Stewart
I don't mean handing them bottled water, but, you know, so all of these things were at a scale I never imagined. And, you know, just this morning, I've got this new book that's coming out, and I was writing the dedication, and I really wrote a dedication to my sons and daughters, spiritual sons and daughters who took the I said, you you took the little bit of fish and bread that I give you, and you've multiplied it and multiplied it.
00;24;16;12 - 00;24;39;14
Steve Stewart
And so I'm very proud of them and I'm very thankful to the Lord for what's going on. It it's yeah, it's quite a time. So that's a sort of biography is I can I didn't even mention the Vancouver House of Prayer and that just about killed me. I don't want to talk about that at first. And the church did you get the idea?
00;24;39;14 - 00;24;51;05
Steve Stewart
The Lord for some reason has had my journey being, Well, this is the greatest adventure of my life, of all the other stuff the last 20 years. It's the greatest adventure of my life. Wow.
00;24;51;07 - 00;25;10;29
Murray Dueck
Well, let me ask you a question about physical healing quickly, because I'm hoping that the people listening to this will go wow and want to look impact nations up. Let's talk about the physical healing and of how that charismatic experience is coming in with all this, this help and training and relief. How do you see that with the physical healing?
00;25;10;29 - 00;25;26;19
Murray Dueck
So the story I like to tell, I'll tell you quick. So we were hearing, you know, as Sam dismantle so much physical healing, I thought, come on, there's no way that there's it can't be that good. There's no freakin way. It's got to be a fish story. So we sent my father along is kind of inspired. Steve always laughs at this, but it is true.
00;25;26;22 - 00;25;34;07
Murray Dueck
So my father was an ambulance chief, so. And, you know, they. They do clinics and stuff. So they're mobile medical clinics.
00;25;34;07 - 00;25;35;00
Steve Stewart
Yeah.
00;25;35;02 - 00;25;58;09
Murray Dueck
Yeah. So we sent him along, right. And Eric came back and said, So what happened? You goes, well, I was in a meeting where I saw 200 people standing in front of me with cataracts and at the name of Jesus, I saw other cataracts dissolve in their eyes and were like, okay, I guess it's really happening that it's.
00;25;58;11 - 00;25;58;29
Steve Stewart
You know, and it's.
00;25;58;29 - 00;26;01;04
Murray Dueck
Not you doing it. It's the team praying, right?
00;26;01;04 - 00;26;32;29
Steve Stewart
It's I absolutely support the old man of God syndrome. So, yes, preaching now I've got a bunch of people that do it. But but for years, you know because it takes some seasoning. But I would get up and then, you know, people come to Christ and we would get them linked in right away. We were huge on discipleship, but the healing time, they'd come forward, the team would pray and I'd go talk to the bass player because I didn't want people coming to me.
00;26;33;02 - 00;27;00;11
Steve Stewart
And then quickly they discover it's Jesus. It's not any down, it's sinful. Yeah. So healing has always been pretty big for me. I, I stumbled into it in 1977 when my best friend's sister was in a terrible car accident and they asked me to come pray. And I'd never prayed for anybody ever. And they're all looking at me and I'm trying to pretend I know what I'm doing.
00;27;00;12 - 00;27;21;17
Steve Stewart
You've heard me tell that story. And I prayed and it was a pathetic little prayer. And she was completely healed. There had been 36 X-rays showing my wrist discs and broken vertebrae, and I prayed and all the pain was gone. And the next day they took 36. They are a bunch of X-rays and there was nothing there. That was my introduction.
00;27;21;17 - 00;27;45;18
Steve Stewart
Wow. Awesome. 77. And as I love to tell people when I teach on healing, of course, that got me so excited and motivated that I turned right around. And in 1983 I prayed for another person. But it's it's part of the calling, and I really believe we're all called to do that. So that's what we love to do.
00;27;45;18 - 00;28;07;10
Steve Stewart
I think, you know, well over 2000 people now from Journeys and they come home and they've healed sick. We have a our accountant is a lovely lady. We've never been anywhere. And she went to Nepal in the fall. And when she came back to share the story and she'd never seen a healing or anything, it wasn't part of her more conservative world.
00;28;07;12 - 00;28;28;27
Steve Stewart
And she started because she prayed for a little girl about five years old, if I remember, who was deaf, and she prayed for her and she could hear perfectly. I mean, but that's what always happens. We have very few journeys where either deaf ears or blind eyes or both don't open. And it's not me. I get out of the way.
00;28;28;27 - 00;28;31;10
Steve Stewart
I'm talking to the bass player.
00;28;31;13 - 00;28;32;07
Murray Dueck
Nice.
00;28;32;09 - 00;28;38;03
Steve Stewart
So that's all. That's all I want to say about healing and if people want to know more, go on our site.
00;28;38;06 - 00;28;38;28
Murray Dueck
That's right.
00;28;39;01 - 00;28;55;17
Steve Stewart
There's not only there's lots of, you know, articles and stuff, but they can they can get access to our training videos. And because I just want people to get trained, I just for people to get realize I could do this.
00;28;55;23 - 00;28;56;18
Murray Dueck
That's right.
00;28;56;20 - 00;29;00;25
Steve Stewart
There's no secret sauce, you know.
00;29;00;27 - 00;29;05;27
Murray Dueck
Beautiful. And everybody, that's what we want. We want you to go on these trips and and bring it home.
00;29;06;00 - 00;29;27;17
Steve Stewart
And and if you do it within the next whatever, before the 14th, you get to go to Malawi. There you go. I wish I could go, but we've got a huge team from Australia, from all over with of leaders. You're going to see stuff that's unbelievable in Malawi because I've been there twice now. And what's going on? Superstition in Africa.
00;29;27;19 - 00;29;45;09
Steve Stewart
And you're going to get clean water, you're going to get food, you're going to help with mobile medical clinics and you are going to be they told me, to get ready for a thousand people a night. So we're going to respond to the gospel and you're going to pray for them and you're going to lead them to Jesus.
00;29;45;13 - 00;30;14;04
Steve Stewart
And we have been working for the last month with 250 pastors so that they've got the team ready for these meetings because I don't I don't do a meeting where, you know, everybody raises their hand, prays a prayer, we go home. But to me, that's I can't even stand that. Instead, what we've got is somebody comes to Jesus and immediately a follower of Jesus comes alongside, says, Hi, nice to meet you.
00;30;14;10 - 00;30;36;05
Steve Stewart
My name's Murray. And hey, you want to get together for a cup of tea? This and that's how it starts, right? That's so, yeah. Go to Malawi if you want to just absolutely have your world rocked. But I want you. It's very hard to go back and sit seven rows back and a year and a half and just carry on with your life.
00;30;36;11 - 00;30;58;13
Steve Stewart
Thank goodness. I Steve, I've got I think I have like three big questions, but I'm trying to put together just listening to what you've talked about and kind of the touching points and, and you know, start reading some of the stuff that you've you've been working on writing is is one. So I'll throw all three of them out there because I think they're all interrelated.
00;30;58;15 - 00;31;30;13
Steve Stewart
The first one is given so you can just talk through them. The first one is given your what you said was in the year 2000, you went through about a two year desert and then in 2011 you went through the the major heart attack in nine months of recovery. Yep. And so the question the three kind of related questions are, one, how did your interaction with the Lord shift through those seasons?
00;31;30;15 - 00;32;06;20
Steve Stewart
What what in what measurable ways did you did encounter changed had some what kind of dynamics shifted from in 2020 11 just in how you appreciated his presence and what happened, you know, encounter wise. And then the other one is like the the idea of scripture thinking of, you know, starting in first healing testimony in 77, you've probably seen all you probably seen almost in variably a lot of different ways people interpret the scriptures and the ways people read the scriptures.
00;32;06;20 - 00;32;43;10
Steve Stewart
And I've noticed just in looking at some of the stuff you're putting out there, that you have a very it's very patristic in that sense, very Jesus oriented view of Scripture. And then in everything you've also said, all of your everything in your ministry is all about bringing people into that place of encounter and knowing him. So so I'm just wondering from the from kind of the the depths of despair in 2002, recovering in 2011 and going through this journey of seeing Jesus at the center of it all in Scripture and then seeing Jesus at the center of all in missions like, you know, what's the what?
00;32;43;10 - 00;33;25;09
Steve Stewart
Those are my three questions basically shifting in the dynamic of encounter, shifting the dynamic of seeing Jesus at the center of it all and then seeing healing. And related to that, how is healing related to seeing Jesus at the center of it all in that sense? Okay, I'll try until 2000, the very beginning of 2000, he had blessed me with and I want to put it in quotations with success, ministry, success.
00;33;25;12 - 00;33;58;09
Steve Stewart
I mainly didn't know what I was doing, but it just seemed like what we put our hand to flourished. And I got invited to speak at conferences and all the stuff that goes with ministry success, and then in the beginning of 2000, in 1999, in the midst of success and everything, I felt like the Lord said, I want you to go away and just listen.
00;33;58;12 - 00;34;22;03
Steve Stewart
So I told our staff that I was going to be gone for one or two months. They couldn't believe it because I was very type A, you know, I was going to be gone for one or two days. What surprise them? And I went away, actually went to Ontario with my friend John on it, sent me up the farm kind of house, and I just I walked the soles off a pair of shoes.
00;34;22;06 - 00;34;52;21
Steve Stewart
But in the midst of that, I think it started to happen. I had no idea that within months I wouldn't be pastoring this big church. But he spoke a bunch of stuff to me and and I won't go into what it all was but direction. And he said, Are you willing to go do this if only 300 people follow you?
00;34;52;24 - 00;35;09;03
Steve Stewart
And I said, I remember this well, at least 300. And for me, sure, sure, Lord. And then he said, What if only ten follow you? So. Well, we're just in the theoretical land here, right?
00;35;09;09 - 00;35;12;05
Murray Dueck
So yes. hypothetical.
00;35;12;07 - 00;35;51;16
Steve Stewart
And I went back and I said, Here's where we're going. And it was it was closer to ten than 300 and a denomination I'd been very central in in the nation and relationally and everything. I was going. And there was also just a huge family crisis with one of my sons and I just went into this dark place and everything.
00;35;51;16 - 00;36;15;23
Steve Stewart
And I knew about getting out of the dark place didn't work and for two years and I ended up with this little church which I still love, called the dwelling place. So only about 75 people I'd never pastor's small church, but with only a few of them knew was I was in such a dark place that often I would spend the whole day in my bedroom.
00;36;15;23 - 00;36;41;29
Steve Stewart
I just. I couldn't face anything. And then I would pull it together and I'd go to preach on Sundays and Sunday evenings. We rented the place and. And it didn't matter how much I prayed the Scriptures as I used to teach people, it didn't matter how much I, I tried to just focus on it didn't matter. I just was in a dark, dark place.
00;36;42;01 - 00;37;31;20
Steve Stewart
And then on a particular day I happen to know it was March 20th, 2002. In a moment it was like a light switch hit. It was dawn. Wow. Two years and it was gone. Well, I went into that loving Jesus, you know I do. I love you. So now I always have. But I went into that where even though we would never say our identity was in our role and position and success because we're too spiritual for that, it was I came out of that and the only identity I had was that I'm my beloved son.
00;37;31;20 - 00;38;00;29
Steve Stewart
He is mine. Yeah. And, you know, a favorite verse. Marines probably heard me say this or speak on a favorite verse for years that relates to this is Song of Solomon eight five. Who is this coming up out of the desert, leaning upon her lover and I started to lean in to Jesus in a whole new way. And by the grace of God, with the ups and downs and the ins and outs, He reformed me.
00;38;01;02 - 00;38;28;28
Steve Stewart
So that's what happened there. And I'd always had a little bit of interest in the contemplative, but I. I didn't know where to sit. My first ten years when I was in that church, if I'd even said I read the contemplative, I mean, it was like reading a bed magazine under the blankets with a flashlight. Yeah. You even quoted Thomas Merton at one point.
00;38;28;28 - 00;38;48;14
Steve Stewart
It's like, whoa, yeah, yeah, I do. And he's a big influence. I just tell the sun's the other day I said, I'd like you to go get this book now. Right. I think my two favorite contemplative are Merton and Julian of Norwich. Okay. And I would read both those every year anyway. So that was a big shift.
00;38;48;16 - 00;39;17;17
Steve Stewart
And so I came out different and I could not I promise you, I could not have seen the Impact Nations tapping. seeing tens and tens. Maybe it's hundreds of thousands of lives impacted. You know, my spiritual son, I told you guys, before we went on the air, they have 48,000 house churches with over a million. And we just worked so hard with them.
00;39;17;17 - 00;39;44;08
Steve Stewart
I could I get to see things at scale that are incredible. I would have seen none of that if he hadn't taken me into the desert, really be, you know, maybe a happy pastor. I wouldn't trade what I do for the biggest church in North America. Ridiculous. Which packed more lives with what I believe is true impact. So that's that one.
00;39;44;10 - 00;40;23;16
Steve Stewart
When I had my heart attack, I was I was knocked flat on my back. And as you alluded to, it was nine months before I got back to where I could travel and work part day. And. Murray a couple of things happened. Murray my dear friend, we lived in the same city. He used to come and see me and often would bring a book and opened me up to a world that I didn't know was there, you know, Eastern Orthodoxy and church fathers.
00;40;23;16 - 00;41;06;21
Steve Stewart
I mean, I knew a little nothing. So that was a huge shift and that course has really affected my my writing and my communication. You know, I do a podcast and teach through different things, Scripture, you know, Ephesians or Matthew and and in course, church fathers are just coming out right? And so the people that I influence it has it would be false Modesty did not just say I never knew I was going to be a spiritual father, but I am I have a family and it's it's a big family.
00;41;06;23 - 00;41;33;29
Steve Stewart
Well, guess what's coming out of them now. Really very, very Christ, thoughtful and and a much more beautiful gospel, which we'll talk about that a little later. So thank you. And that second one, that way. So that's the first question because it had A and B, what was the second question? Well, the second question really goes into what you were just what you just said.
00;41;33;29 - 00;42;01;13
Steve Stewart
We'll talk about later is, yeah, I think that's one and two. Just add just a the dynamics that the dynamics shift and how you I love that the dynamics shift isn't is altered. You know it's partly in how you saw him but it shifted dramatically how you saw yourself in relation to him of course which is it always has to it always in the last book this one that's just going to be going to print is the fifth book.
00;42;01;15 - 00;42;31;11
Steve Stewart
The last one was called The Beatitudes for a Time of Crisis. And what that really was is about the journey upward to him, downward into May inward and to be outward to others. You know, you cannot get authentically, authentically close to Christ without it changing the way you see people it has and changing the way he sees, you know, so much.
00;42;31;11 - 00;42;34;22
Steve Stewart
I see myself differently. It's almost sense.
00;42;34;25 - 00;43;00;03
Joshua Hoffert
Yeah, it's it's.