Bochim or Gilgal?

Well its Monday morning.  I love Monday's cause I stay home and right now Ann is at the gym and the kids are playing.  Controlled chaos for the moment.  I am even on the computer.  Judges 2:1-5  really hit me these last few days.  I had never seen this contrast between Gilgal and Bochim.  Gilgal was a place of triumph, blessing, memorial, victory, and joy.  Bochim on the other hand was indicative of a people doing it their own way in their own strength.  It was known for forgetfulness, deception, and sorrow.  Sadly, the people of Israel had moved from Gilgal and all it represented to this place called Bochim.  So often I find myself in a place in my life much like Bochim.  Just like Israel when I choose to do it my own way it will lead to forgetfulness, deception, and sorrow.  By God's grace it doesn't have to be this way.  All the people of Israel were called to do in this early section of the book was to take God at His Word and possess the land He had given them by faith.  While its different for us as New Covenant believers, the principle holds the same.  We haven't been given a land, but we have been given a life.  Ephesians 1.3 says, "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ."  2 Peter 1:3  says that we have been given everything we need for life and godliness.  The key thing becomes realizing how God calls us to appropriate this life He has given to us.  Just like Israel we are called to appropriate it by faith.  This type of faith calls for a wholehearted yielded obedience to Christ and His Word.  It reminds me of Paul's prayer in Ephesians 3 when he prays, "that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man,so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith."   This is really what it comes down to, although the comfort is that it is only by God's enabling grace we ever abide in Him.  God calls us to simply say yes to Him, a wholehearted response of submission.  By God's grace let's walk in Gilgal.