“Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks, receives; and the one who seeks, finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened” (Matthew 7:7-8).

 

These words of Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew assure us that God responds when we ask, seek, and knock. They tell us that God responds to our prayers!

However, most of us have had the experience of praying for something and not receiving the answer we wanted.

 

If we question the lack of a positive response, we are often told that God hears our prayer, but God sometimes says “no”. After all, loving parents often say “no” to the requests of their children.

 

We are also told that God does not have to answer our prayer the moment we ask. God can choose to respond in this life or in the next. For example, a prayer for healing may not be answered in this life but it certainly will be in the next, when all is made well in God’s kingdom.

 

This Sunday's Gospel (Matthew 15:21-28) gives us another insight into prayer. We learn that we are to keep on praying even when it seems God is not listening. We are to keep on asking, seeking, and knocking.

 

In that Gospel, a Canaanite woman, a Gentile, approached Jesus and called out, “Have pity on me, Lord, Son of David! My daughter is tormented by a demon.” But Jesus gave her no word of response and he told his disciples, “I was only sent to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” The Canaanite woman was not part of the flock that he came to save.

 

The woman obviously heard what Jesus told his disciples, but she was not discouraged. She knelt before Jesus in homage and called out again, “Lord, help me.”

 

This second time, Jesus did not remain silent, he responded in a way that might have driven her to give up. He told her it was “not right to take the food of the children and throw it to the dogs.” His time and attention were to be given to the children of Israel not to the Gentiles, who were sometimes referred to as “dogs” by the Jews.

 

But even this did not stop the woman from continuing her pleading and her prayer. For a third time, she asked Jesus for his help, and even used the words Jesus had employed to plead her cause. “Please Lord, for even the dogs eat the scraps that fall from the table of their masters.” Jesus was amazed at the great faith shown by this Canaanite woman, and he did what she had been asking. He healed her daughter.

 

Her continued pleading also did something else: it may have helped Jesus appreciate that his mission was not only to the lost sheep of Israel, but also to the Gentiles. We might say a mother’s persistent prayer changed the outlook of Jesus.

 

Sunday’s Gospel teaches us that like that woman, we are to persist in our prayer. We are to keep on asking, seeking, knocking, even when it seems God is not listening.

 

Persistent prayer keeps us in the presence of God and reminds us that the Lord is always with us in good times and in bad. Persistent prayer can also help us to view things from God’s perspective and, as we saw in the Gospel, it may even influence the Lord.

 

This Sunday, the Canaanite woman shows us by her example that we are to keep praying, asking, seeking, and knocking. Like her, we are never to give up calling upon the Lord in prayer.

 

© 2026 Rev. Thomas Iwanowski