It’s Day Two of our 21 Day Watch.  Half the battle in “keeping watch” is simply having the desire to spend time alone with God. Do I truly want to know Him?  My friend Sara asked God to give her this “want to” and discovered the answer to her prayer in the most unlikely of places.

GUEST POST: By Sara Miller

As this year began, I had one consistent prayer request. I kept asking God for the desire to spend time with Him. That might sound odd to you. It’s not that I’ve never had a desire or that I don’t want to have the desire.  It’s just a real honest request from a wife and a mom of a toddler and a baby who works part-time and seeks a daily balance with all of her many hats. I started the year with a realization that I was at the end of myself.  I needed to go before God in confession and ask Him to plant this desire deep within me and then help me live it out.

 It’s been said that God works in mysterious ways. Since He answered my request by way of a moldy shower, I’m prone to agree! Curious? Well, read on!

We bought our home just over a year ago.  We soon learned that our master shower tile was poorly installed. Water collected around the drain, but didn’t drain properly, so over time MOLD began to grow. We cleaned–a lot–with every natural and chemical solution known to man. Nothing helped. So we hired a “grout guy” to come and re-grout the shower. He cleaned, scraped, and re-grouted the tile and then left us with one handy hint – squeegee. It seems that the only way to keep mold at bay is to use the squeegee every day. Daily. Every day. You get my point.

 It’s largely annoying to spend three minutes at the end of every shower scraping water off the walls and floor. As a mom, I hardly have time to shower, let alone clean it when I’m done. But, I dread mold. Each time I shower I choose to spend a few minutes with the squeegee at the end because I know the alternative is worse.

 So, how did God use a moldy shower to answer my prayer? One day while I was squeegeeing, it hit me. Just a few minutes of daily commitment to this task clears away the mold, the dirt, and the filth I dread.  In much the same way, won’t a daily time with God, even if brief, also allow a daily cleansing of my heart? Won’t a regular commitment to spending time with Him help me keep some of the “mold” out of my heart and mind, as I allow Him to use that time to fill me with His love and truth?

In the midst of a daily struggle to do it all and be it all I find God cultivating that desire within me to spend time with Him. What a blessing! God does work in mysterious ways, even through moldy showers.