FAIRLAWN -- God is better than ever.

That's Sean Jessie's take on it.

Although his faith was tested Jan. 24 when a faulty gas furnace sent his United Muffler shop up in smoke, Jessie's fortunes have since doubled.

The 37-year-old man recently opened a new service station on the same spot where the charred remains of his original shop attracted attention last winter. One cold January evening after the fire -- as he tossed and turned in bed beside his pregnant wife, Keli -- a sleepless Jessie got in the pickup truck he could no longer afford and drove to the burned building he couldn't afford to lose.

Armed with full cans of spray paint, Jessie answered the call of a Christian soldier.

All over the scorched walls of the building that -- ironically -- once housed the Fairlawn Volunteer Fire Department, Jessie sprayed out a message: "God is still good."

"It was like a resolve that God and I had," Jessie said last week. "It was God saying to me, 'Look, dummy, I got better things in store for you. I ain't left you. I won't leave you hanging.'

"It was like the more I painted the building, the better I felt," he added.

Buoyed by community support, Jessie decided to rebuild.

"I had a lot of folks comment on that message," he said. "If one person was inspired by that message, it was all worth it."

Clearly passionate about his religion, Jessie admits he wasn't always that way.

When he was a boy growing up in Pilot, he happily accompanied the Rev. Elbert Lee Naff to church services each Sunday. But when he went off to college, he said he forgot about church -- and his detachment eventually began to gnaw at him.

"I met my wife and kept feeling there was a void in my life. Nothing was filling it. I tried every 'ism' there is as far as religion goes."

Jessie got his family into church and he and his wife both became active members at Grove United Methodist in Radford. They taught Sunday School, sang in the choir and raised their two children in the Christian way.

Looking back, though, Jessie believes he wasn't a true Christian.

"We were participants on Sunday when we were needed and the rest of the week was ours," he explained, noting that it was on his "Walk to Emmaus" in 2000 that he experienced his epiphany.

"That's when Christ entered my life to stay. It was an eye-opening experience."

Sponsored by the United Methodist Church, the Walk to Emmaus is a weekend spiritual renewal program drawn from the biblical story of Luke, who tells of the first Easter when Jesus arose and appeared to two disciples who were walking together along the road from Jerusalem to Emmaus.

On his Walk to Emmaus, Jessie said, he learned the importance of being an active Christian, of putting God first in every aspect of his life.

Had that not happened, he noted, the flames that consumed his business in January would have consumed him, too.

"I would have given up," he said. "We probably would have taken the insurance money, gone to Florida and called it quits."

Instead, Jessie went from a three-lift garage to an 11-lift garage. After paying off the existing mortgage on his old building and satisfying debts to his vendors, he added a chunk of his money to the insurance payment and took out another loan to rebuild.

"We fell short on covering all we lost by about $150,000," he said, noting that his new building project totaled $800,000.

"Somebody pinch me," he added as he surveyed the gleaming new shop. "I had always hoped to have a nicer building. This is unfathomable in my mind. I never, ever imagined having a place like this. ... It's the hand of God."

But Jessie said his blessings went beyond concrete and steel.

His third child, Ashleigh Renee, was born April 13 just as the new building was starting. A generous member of his church covered his truck payments for four months so he could keep the vehicle. And, best of all, he was able to keep his employees employed.

"Everybody that was with him when it burned is still with him except for his brother," noted manager Robert Mullins, who said Jessie's brother stayed with their father, who owns United Muffler in Christiansburg.

Jessie said he's grateful his customers and friends remained faithful, but they say the fire that destroyed his first building only fueled their faith in Jessie.

"He walks the walk. It's not just talk," said Chuck Pannell, a friend of Jessie's and member of the Christian Motorcycle Association. "I came here two months before his place burned down. We had prayer in front of customers and everyone else. Not everyone is comfortable doing that."

If anything, the trials Jessie went through in the past year have only sustained the convictions he found on his Walk to Emmaus.

He learned that material possessions are not his to claim.

"It's all God's," he said. "We're just borrowing it. We have nothing if we don't have salvation and family. Give it to God. It's not yours anyway."