Mr. Visionary and I talk a lot. He was born to explain, exhort and encourage. It is a gift. I was born to question, condemn and complain. It is not a gift, per se, it is…ummm…an inherited trait. In any case, we talk a lot, with myself usually asking questions, and he usually teaching. He is so natural in his teaching, that I often find myself having gleaned some deep truth from what he had considered to be casual conversation. This is where I am finding myself now.

We have a cozy loveseat in a sun-filled bay window in our room, and spend as much time there as life will allow, reading or chatting with each other, talking with the children, or doing our bible study together. When we aren’t talking there, we do so at the kitchen table, or I stand in the bathroom doorway as he is getting ready for the day. In one of those casual chatting times this week, he was mentioning to me something he had recently shared with some young men. He was ‘just talking’, but I was listening. How many times the Holy Spirit speaks to me in apparently offhand ways! As is frequently the case, the second-hand advice I received from Mr. Visionary’s conversation was a message to me from my Father.

Mr. Visionary mentioned that the fruit of the Spirit called self-control begets self-control and that the opposite is equally true. When we pride ourselves on being thin while lacking self-control in other areas, we are deceived. He shared how he at one time didn’t feel a need to be self-controlled in the area of food because he wasn’t overweight, but that Father showed him that it mattered. A lack of control in one area will migrate to another, he said.

Ouch.

That would certainly explain why a dark chocolate inclination addiction obsession and a tendency to be too angry too quickly are the sin issues with which I contend the most (or at least should contend the most). They are first cousins, related on the self-control side. Not my idea of a fun family reunion, I assure you.

So, I am listening…to my Father and Mr. Visionary, because the former often uses the latter to teach me.

And I have a lot to learn.