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November, 2010  Update

A couple of years ago now, I had a revelation – I saw that the reason Jesus said to “do unto others as you would have them do unto you” is because WE ARE ONE - we are all part of one another.  We are a many-membered body, and a man does not want to hurt his own body!  Right there alongside the Golden Rule is “what ye measure out, it shall be measured again unto you.”  So if I try to hurt others, oppress others, gain from others, then I hurt myself, oppress myself, cause myself loss.  

With my Baptist background, this was a totally new and very radical thought to me. But by this time I had grown used to the fact that God is a pretty radical God, so I began looking in Scripture for confirmation.  And of course it is there in bountiful measure even though I had not been able to see it until my eyes were opened to it.  First of all, “the Lord our God is ONE Lord” (Duet 6:4).  One means “that which is united as one in contrast to separate parts” (Dictionary of Biblical Languages).  And unity means “the quality or state of not being multiple” (Mer. Web. Online Dictionary). 

The body of Christ is a many-membered body (1Corin. 12:4-27, Eph. 4:25).  “We, being many, are one body in Christ, and every one members one of another” (Rom. 12:5) There should be no schism in the body, but the members should have the same care for one another (1 Corin. 12:25).  And whether one member suffer, all the members suffer with it, or one member be honored, all the members rejoice with it (vs. 26). Yes, there are diversities (1 Corin. 12: 4-5) but it is all the same Spirit that is given to every man (vs. 7).  So, who is my fellow member of the body of Christ?When we ask that, it’s like asking, “Who is my neighbor?” and Jesus’ answer to that was a Samaritan, a person considered to be totally excluded from the Kingdom of God.  WOW! - my neighbor (whoever he/she is!) is part of the same body of Christ that I am!  We are to love our neighbor as ourselves because our neighbor IS a part of ourselves!  And when I harm my neighbor, it is harming myself, for my neighbor is part of me.  My neighbor may not understand this yet, and may harm me – not realizing that when he does so he injures himself.

We are all united – all ONE.  Therefore, we are to love one another as we would love our self. No one hates his own flesh!  And we suffer as long as we keep harming others, because what we are doing in actuality is harming our own selves.  When we have hatred, bitterness, and resentment toward others, we will reap that in our own lives and be filled with sorrows until we learn that what we intend for others will come back to us.  Until we learn this, we will suffer.  And this is the lesson that suffering is intended to teach.

 One more insight, for now:  

“…seeing that ye have put off the old man with his deeds; And have put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him: Where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free: but Christ is all, and in all” (Col 3:9-11). 

Previously, I looked at these verses as meaning that when “they” all come into Christ, there will be no more divisions.  Now I have seen that it is when “I” shed the old man (a.k.a. carnal mind, ego) and come into renewed knowledge, this is a place where “I” see there ARE no divisions – only unity in diversity.  Where I can look with renewed perspective and see there is no Barbarian, Scythian, Buddhist, Hindu, etc. but that Christ IS all and is IN ALL.   

The ramifications of these insights are enormous and have led me many new places, which I hope to write more about if I can even find words to express the wonder of it.  Although mine has been a journey into a greater knowledge of the Love of God, many will view it as a journey from orthodoxy into heresy.  So be it.  The journey is scary, but onward I must go.  The Lord has torn down my reliance on many commonly-held views and continued to abolish so many traditional assumptions of truth in my life until I felt I stood all alone.  Now, my circle of inclusiveness has been expanded into yet another new place.  A large place that includes all and where I can love all because they are just on a different place on this journey; a place where I can let others be free to be where they are, yet not allow them to tie me in any one place, for I am free to follow.  I must follow, or I will die – for to follow is Life itself.

 O! Give us grace, Lord, to love one another…  

“That they may be one, as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they may be one in us...I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one” (John 17:21,23)

Mae Shurow

November, 2010

May, 2008 Update

I have felt the need to update this page for a long time, but didn’t know where to start, or how to describe the last three years of this wonderful journey.  This morning, however, the Lord began to give me words.  I pray He will grant grace and that His purpose will shine through the mere words on this page. 

Sometime in early 2006, the Lord began to give me “New Wine Is Better.”  I saw some of it dimly, but not clearly enough to finish the article.  It was to be more than a year before I would be able to finish it.   

I entered a “dry spell” in which I was unable to write.  The Lord seemed distant, and I began to fight distractions and sometimes even temptations that I thought had been overcome, by the grace of God, many years ago.  The Lord was not silent during this time; there were periods of intense revelation which were given, I knew, NOT for me to write about, but in which He dealt with me.  For the first time in a long time, I did not know where I was spiritually.  The Lord, ever faithful, gave me the following verses which were my prayer many times during this period: 

Blessed are they that keep his testimonies, and that seek him with the whole heart. O that my ways were directed to keep thy statutes! Then shall I not be ashamed, when I have respect unto all thy commandments. I will praise thee with uprightness of heart, when I shall have learned thy righteous judgments. I will keep thy statutes: O forsake me not utterly. (Psalm 119:2,5-8)

One thing became clear, when I came out on the other side of this – whatever it was I was going through – I would have learned how to keep His judgments and laws, and I would praise Him for it.  Sometimes that seemed little comfort in my barrenness, but I kept seeking Him with my whole heart.

Late in 2006, the Lord led me to reread “The Pursuit of God” by A.W. Tozer.  As I reread this wonderful book by Tozer, I understood it in a way like never before.  I began to realize that the Lord was calling me to the cross of the self-life. Tozer said it well: 

“Self is the opaque veil that hides the Face of God from us. It can be removed only in spiritual experience, never by mere instruction. As well try to instruct leprosy out of our system. There must be a work of God in destruction before we are free. We must invite the cross to do its deadly work within us. We must bring our self-sins to the cross for judgment. We must prepare ourselves for an ordeal of suffering in some measure like that through which our Saviour passed when He suffered under Pontius Pilate.

“Let us remember: when we talk of the rending of the veil we are speaking in a figure, and the thought of it is poetical, almost pleasant; but in actuality there is nothing pleasant about it. In human experience that veil is made of living spiritual tissue; it is composed of the sentient, quivering stuff of which our whole beings consist, and to touch it is to touch us where we feel pain. To tear it away is to injure us, to hurt us and make us bleed. To say otherwise is to make the cross no cross and death no death at all. It is never fun to die. To rip through the dear and tender stuff of which life is made can never be anything but deeply painful. Yet that is what the cross did to Jesus and it is what the cross would do to every man to set him free” (1948).

One other overarching thing the Lord kept speaking about to me during this entire time was LOVE.  He was calling me to love my enemies, do good to them that hated me, pray for those who despitefully used me, bless those who cursed me.  The Lord was saying, “LOVE is the strongest force in the universe – for God IS Love.  LOVE is stronger even than death!”  It seemed every day the Lord would speak Romans 12:12 to me, “Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good,” and He showed me that it is only the Love of God in us that enables us to love our enemies – ONLY by Love can evil be overcome by good! 

Well, I tried and I tried and I tried to love my enemies.  And I tried harder.  I managed not to hate them most of the time, but I just couldn’t LOVE them.  About this time, the Lord used William Law’s “Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life” to show me that there was a part of me (the flesh, of course) that did not WANT to love my enemies.  Law basically says “...we DO what we WANT.”  If we REALLY WANT to obey God, He will give grace for obedience.  When I finally came to the place where I really did not want to hang on to my feelings of resentment and really wanted to let them go, a miracle happened. 

I have since learned that this glorious experience has been called by many different names: entering the presence of God, death to self, baptism of the Holy Spirit, entire sanctification, second blessing, being perfected in love, crossing over Jordon, entering the Promised Land, entering into Rest, union with God, the Deeper Life – but all are descriptions of the same event; something that I had never read about or had any kind of teaching on before the Lord brought me through it.

The Lord led me to read some other writers on this subject – Watchman Nee, Jesse Penn-Lewis, Andrew Murray, Madame Guyon, and some of the Wesleyan writers. The mystics wrote of this experience, as did the Wesleys, the Morvarians, the Quakers, and many more. These who wrote by the Spirit greatly helped me to understand this road the Lord has brought me on by faith alone.  These other writers have written of it much more eloquently than I’m sure I ever could, but some articles I have written since I came into what I have termed this “New Place” include New Wine is Better,  FAITH: Abiding Under His Wings, Let This Mind Be in You,  Pride: (Resisting the Spirit), Bondage, and The Demon Within.

This “New Place” is a glorious place, a “land, whither thou goest in to possess it, is not as the land of Egypt, from whence ye came out, where thou sowedst thy seed, and wateredst it with thy foot, as a garden of herbs: But the land, whither ye go to possess it, is a land of hills and valleys, and drinketh water of the rain of heaven: A land which the LORD thy God careth for: the eyes of the LORD thy God are always upon it…” (Deut. 11:10-12). 

I pray that each and every one of us will enter and abide therein.  May we seek first the Kingdom; seek Him with our whole hearts.  Seek, and ye shall find…

In His ever more wonderful Love,

Mae Shurow

May 17, 2008

December, 2005

My name is Mae Shurow.  I am 48 years old and have lived in eastern Kentucky all my life.  My parents believed in God but were not saved until later in their lives, so, I wasn’t exposed to church very much while growing up.  I was taught good morals, but what I was taught about religion - don’t cut your hair or shave your legs, don't wear make-up - didn’t make much sense to me.  In addition, I was exposed to a lot of people who argued about religion.  I thought, “If that’s religion, I don’t want any part of it!” I became something of an atheist, and I hadn’t set foot inside a church in twenty years, when, by His grace, the Lord reached out and saved me at the age of 36.  

I was so excited about what the Lord had done for me and the new life He had given me!  I devoured the Bible daily, hungry to learn, and was astounded at what was revealed to me in the pages of Scripture by the Spirit of God.  I also had a great desire to be around others who were having the same experience I was, so I eagerly began to attend a Southern Baptist church.  I participated in everything - took all the studies, evangelism classes, whatever...anything they were doing at church, I was willing to do. But I was increasingly disturbed by the fact that very few people in the church appeared to be very dedicated to following Christ.

It seemed to me that a large number of churchgoers were still spiritual babes many years after conversion, and I found a growing burden within me to help others grow spiritually. The Lord eventually led me to teach a New Believer’s Sunday school class at our church.  In the midst of teaching that class it became increasingly clear to me that something was horribly wrong!  There were no signs of new life in these "new converts." It was rare for them to come to Sunday school more than a couple of times; most of them had no love for the things of God and little or no desire to obey God.   No amount of prodding would convince them of the necessity for reading the Bible or doing the Sunday school lessons (Foundations Study). Worse yet, there seemed to be no evidence of changed lives nor hunger for the Lord.  I was deeply troubled by these conditions, but I thought, "Who am I to say anything?  The pastor has affirmed to these 'new converts' that they are saved..."  

After much prayer and seeking God, I eventually came to the heart-wrenching realization that if these "new converts" didn't look, act, talk, or walk like Christians, they probably were not.  In talking with those who had "made a profession," I found that a considerable portion - many of whom were very young - could not even tell who Jesus really was.  Further, a large number had no realization they had sinned against a holy God and stood in need of forgiveness!  There seemed to be no understanding of “what must I do to be saved?” And the conditions found among these “new converts” proved to be typical, for it has been reported that as many as 85-90% of new converts in all denominations very shortly "fall away" (Frontline Ministries, citing Comfort & Cameron, 2005).  Statistics compiled by the denominations themselves tell the tale: according to a Baptist press story, Jack Smith, a "soul-winning evangelism associate" for NAMB, has discovered in his own experience with Southern Baptist churches that LESS THAN 10% OF THE CONVERTS PRODUCED ACTUALLY STICK (Founders Ministries, 2005, citing Baptist Press). And "In the Assembly of God's 1990s 'Decade of Harvest,' out of the 3.5 million supposedly converted, they showed a net gain of only 5 new attenders for every 100 recorded professions" (Elliff, 2005, ¶7).  

I believe the root of the problem could be man-made misrepresentations of the gospel.  The devices commonly used are, for the most part, devoid of the Spirit.  We have been implementing earthly wisdom in our evangelistic efforts (endeavoring to build God’s house with Tools of Man).

It matters not the denomination, each teaches their version of a “formula” that one must follow to be saved.  The Catholic Church teaches that water baptism (along with membership in their church and good works) saves a person, and they require the baptism of all their infants for this reason.  The churches that sprang out of the Reformation (Lutheran, Presbyterian, and Episcopalian) broke free from much of the dogma of the Catholic Church, but kept belief in the act of infant baptism as a means of entering into covenant with God.  Methodists baptize infants as well, believing water baptism to be a “means of grace” that God uses to bring the infant to saving faith.  The Church of Christ, too, teaches that water baptism washes away sin, although they do not baptize infants. Baptists and Evangelicals, on the other hand, have been swept up in “Easy Believism,” which attempts to persuade potential converts to mouth a prayer, assuring them this “Sinner’s Prayer” will result in a better life in the here and now and a ticket to heaven in the future.  

Please don’t misunderstand, all these churches are well-intentioned. Most of them truly desire to see people saved, but the use of human techniques cannot fail to bring a very real danger of false conversions.  The fact is that no man can come to the Father unless the Spirit draws him.  Even at that, the conviction of the Spirit can be mistaken for the complete surrender of conversion (when a person agrees to God’s terms and calls out to Him from the heart, thereby entering into covenant with Him. 

While teaching me about man-made misrepresentations of the Gospel, the Lord also opened my eyes to other areas in which I had been influenced by the "traditions of men."  I was very cautious when the Holy Spirit first began to reveal what seemed to me to be radical concepts, asking the Lord many times to show me if I was really hearing His voice or if I was mistaken.  But the Spirit was persistent, and finally I could no longer deny that what I was hearing was from Him.  I have written about some of these insights in the Articles section, and I invite you to read them prayerfully, asking the Spirit of Truth to guide you and searching the Scriptures to see if these things are so (Acts 17:11).   

Some things that God revealed to me were so different from what was being taught in our church that I was afraid to say anything.  But I did speak out about the Easy Believism practices in our church, and was encouraged in many conversations with our pastor because he appeared to realize the truth of this situation in our own church.  He seemed repentant about his personal responsibility in the matter as well, and expressed regret for misleading a considerable number of people to believe their salvation was secure merely because they had repeated the "Sinner's Prayer."

Regrettably, our pastor proved too fearful to change the way things were done in our church.  Eventually, he felt so threatened that he dissolved my Sunday school class.  He would give no reason except for rumors among the congregation, and emphasized that he would understand if we didn’t feel comfortable attending church there any longer.  As my husband and I prayed about the situation, the Lord released us to leave.  It was our hearts’ desire to follow the Lord, and we prayed for another church - a place we could worship in Spirit and Truth.  Before long, though, it became clear that He was calling us apart - into the desert.  To  learn, not from man, but to be taught by the Spirit.  So, for now, I am content to sit at the Master's feet and learn of Him.  It truly is an incredible journey! 

We know not what God has in store.  But one thing I decided long ago – I will follow Him. 

Mae Shurow

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Elliff, J. Southern Baptists, an Unregenerate Denomination. 2005. para.7 Retrieved December 3, 2005 from
        http://www.ccwonline.org/sbc.html
Frontline Ministries, Lorenzini, M. (2005). Retrieved November 3, 2005 from 
     http://www.frontlinemin.org/decisionism.asp, citing  Comfort, R. and Cameron, K. (2004). The Way of the 
      Master. Wheaton, Ill. Tyndale House Publishers, pp. 61-63.  Book can be  purchased at
       http://www.livingwaters.com/Merchant2/merchant.mv?Screen=PROD&Product_Code=140  

Founders Ministries. Ascol, T. Retrieved November 3, 2005 from
     http://www.founders.org/blog/2005/08/honest-statistics-large-convention-of_04.html