Battling Anxiety and Ephesians 4:17-32

Well, before I begin discussing today's passage, I must let enlist your prayers. After orientation for school today, I met with the woman who handles financial aid for Southern Tech. And we discovered that I'll need to come up with (at least) an extra $2500 a quarter to pay for school. My bright futures apparently only covers a fixed amount (which is quite small) for private colleges. In battling anxiety and discouragement right now, I desperately need your prayers. I am stepping out in faith and still starting the program on Monday, but honestly, I don't know how long I'll be able to afford it. This is a difficult time for me, and your prayers would be greatly appreciated. Pray that my focus would be on Christ, for He is truly all that matters, and this situation has been ordained by God for His glory and my good. I need to keep that in the forefront of my mind.

Anyway, onto today's passage.

"Now this I say and testify in the Lord, that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds. They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to the hardness of heart. They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity." What a picture of our hopelessness before conversion! We are shown what the futility of mind looks like here. The next little bit shows the contrasting life. "But that is not the way you have learned Christ!—assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus, to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness."

"Assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him." This is a scary thought. For those who have not heard about him and are not taught in him, there is still the state of the futility of the mind. But our futile minds have been renewed in the spirit. What a gift this is!

Jumping up to verse 30, I'm reminded of the first day of our study. "In him also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we aquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory"(Ephesians1:13-14). Verse 30 says the following: "And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption." I thought it was a pretty cool connection to chapter one.