About Me

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Blue Ridge Area of Virginia
Alicha McHugh is author of "Daughter of the Promise" first in her: Numbered Among the Stars series (available on Amazon.com). She is a homemaker to her husband of 15 years, homeschooler to their children. Writing, enjoying tea and creaming Raw Honey are three of her current pursuits. Grabbing time to read is always high on her list of priorities! If you'd like to contact her, she'd love to hear from you! Just email: alichamchugh@gmail.com

Tuesday, May 15, 2012

The Departure...

Do you remember the scene in The Wizard of Oz when Dorothy & Co. stand gazing at the Emerald City in the distance?

As they talk about how beautiful the city is and the inherent merit the ruler must be of such a spectacular dwelling place, a field of orange colored poppies lay before them, obscuring the yellow brick road...the only path to the city.

The Enemy placed the flowers there.

~~~~~~~~~~~

A few months ago, I began reading a book called Sacred Rhythms, by Ruth Bailey Barton. Of this book, accepted and promoted by those in authority at the church my husband and I attended, I am ashamed to say I got more than half-way through before I realized something was wrong.

Very wrong.

I had a sense of it early on, but being sensitive to my early "legalistic" up-bringing, I dismissed it.

I will not write much about Barton's book now and minumally in future posts, only to say that during the course of reading it, when unease turned to suspicion, I brought it to my husband's attention. 

I didn't feel like I could maneuver through what seemed to be good, albeit odd at times, advice on spiritual disciplines. The interesting quotes she took from various obscure sources (obscure to your mainstream Protestant) at the last, slapped me in the face and made this girl's iron pizza-in-the-morning-stomach downright queasy. More on that later, but I'll say this, knowing church history woke me long after knowing my King should have...

Well, my husband took up the gauntlet for me.

The result?

An ignited spiritual journey into the war the Holy Spirit told us, the Body of Christ, we ARE in...but didn't have eyes to see, or ears to hear...or just didn't recognize it for the truth it is...
Ephesians 6:12 ~  For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age,[a] against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.
This "Departure" series of posts has been prompted by the things my husband and I have discovered, things revealed in scripture and previously dismissed as antiquated in this, our journey.

I will showcase the unwitting compromises we've made and the saturation of weeds thriving in the garden of Americanized "Christianity". Weeds which, like Eve's fruit, are pleasing to the eye, stroking our intellectual elitist attitudes. Thus, "professing to be wise" we've become fools.

We have fallen asleep in a field of poppies, the seeds of which our dear Lord, Jesus Christ himself warned us against!

This post is a call, a plea for the snow to come...It is time for us to wake up.

In the coming weeks and months, I plan to pour out our "discoveries", asking God to manifest 1 Corinthians 1:27 through me, because, Friend, I know what I am...I am the Scare Crow and the Lion, balled up into one. My husband, the Tin Man.

Please concider...you just might be Dorothy.

I welcome you to SEARCH the scriptures to see if the things that I'll be sharing are so. Above all, may God, the Lord Jesus Christ be honored and glorified.