Prayer: Persisting in Prayer When Jesus Feels Silent or Slow

Introduction

Are you willing to keep trusting Jesus when He feels silent, slow, or even confusing, and will you go deeper than the “radio hits” of Christianity to really know Him? The central lesson of Mark 7:24–30 is that Jesus is the Savior with full authority over darkness, who brings God’s mercy beyond Israel to the nations, and He invites persistent, humble faith that won’t let go of Him even when His ways stretch us. Mark often moves like a movie director, quick scenes, zooming in and out. But Mark 7 is also like a music catalog: we all know the “singles” (feeding the 5,000, calming the storm). This passage is more like the “B-sides”, not the story people put on the inspirational playlist. Yet it is exactly the kind of passage that takes us deeper into the heart of Jesus and trains us to trust Him when we don’t immediately understand Him.

Main Points

Are you willing to keep trusting Jesus when He feels silent, slow, or even confusing, and will you go deeper than the “radio hits” of Christianity to really know Him? The central lesson of Mark 7:24–30 is that Jesus is the Savior with full authority over darkness, who brings God’s mercy beyond Israel to the nations, and He invites persistent, humble faith that won’t let go of Him even when His ways stretch us.

Mark often moves like a movie director, quick scenes, zooming in and out. But Mark 7 is also like a music catalog: we all know the “singles” (feeding the 5,000, calming the storm). This passage is more like the “B-sides”, not the story people put on the inspirational playlist. Yet it is exactly the kind of passage that takes us deeper into the heart of Jesus and trains us to trust Him when we don’t immediately understand Him.

Jesus Seeks Rest Yet Cannot Be Hidden

Mark opens with Jesus traveling about 50 miles north into the region of Tyre and Sidon (Mark 7:24), Gentile territory, outside the normal expectations of Israel. He enters a house and “wanted no one to know it,” yet “He could not be hidden.”

I need you to see both truths at once:

• Jesus is truly human, He deliberately pulls away to rest (a theme Mark has already shown us; cf. Mark 6).
• Jesus is also unmistakably powerful, His presence draws need and faith, even where people weren’t “supposed” to be looking for Him.

Even when Jesus is trying to be alone, someone finds Him who cannot do life without Him. That alone should encourage you: if you feel far away, if you feel outside the “normal path,” Jesus is not inaccessible. He cannot be hidden from genuine need and faith.

Unclean Spirit Encounters Reveal The Real War

A woman arrives whose “young daughter had an unclean spirit” (Mark 7:25). This is not merely a family hardship; it’s spiritual oppression.

Mark has repeatedly forced us to face the reality of the spiritual realm:

• Early in Jesus’ ministry He casts out an unclean spirit (Mark 1).
• He confronts “Legion” (Mark 5).
• Now, again, He is sought for deliverance.

I’m going to disciple you plainly here: you cannot live Christianity faithfully while treating spiritual realities as “first-century stuff.” If we worship in Spirit and truth, if we pray expecting God to hear, if we ask God to revive hearts and save the lost, we are already acting on the reality of the unseen world.

Paul gives us the lens we need:

“We do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities… rulers of the darkness of this age… spiritual hosts of wickedness…” (Ephesians 6:12)

The chaos and division in the world cannot be reduced to politics, education, or mere morality. There is a spiritual battle underneath it all. And this passage is going to remind you: Jesus has absolute authority over that darkness.

A Humble Posture That Moves God’s Heart

The woman “came and fell at His feet” (Mark 7:25). Mark uses that posture again and again as a sign of true faith, humility, dependence, surrender. Many people miss Jesus not because they lack information, but because they refuse that posture. They “know” too much, assume too much, or demand control.

But those who come low before Him, begging, trusting, desperate, are often the ones who experience His help most clearly.

I want you to learn this: humility is not a tactic; it’s reality. When I fall at Jesus’ feet, I’m simply telling the truth about who He is and who I am.

Persistent Prayer Through Silence And Delay

Mark tells us this woman “kept asking Him” (Mark 7:26). Matthew’s parallel account adds that Jesus at first did not answer her (cf. Matthew 15:23). That detail matters: her persistence happened in the face of silence.

This is one of the most practical discipleship lessons in the whole story.

• God is not a vending machine.
• God’s timing is not my timing.
• God’s silence is not permission to quit.

Some of you are carrying a burden for someone you love, a son, a daughter, a friend, and it feels like heaven is quiet. Let this woman disciple you: she kept asking.

James teaches the same posture:

“The effective, fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much.” (James 5:16)

James then points to Elijah, whose ministry even touched this broader region, and shows how God can delay for wise purposes (James 5:17–18). Delay is not denial. Silence is not absence. Keep asking.

The Hard Saying That Tests Real Faith

Then comes the sentence that makes this feel like a “B-side” passage:

“Let the children be fed first, for it is not good to take the children’s bread and throw it to the little dogs.” (Mark 7:27)

Yes, Jesus is testing her. And yes, He uses an illustration that can sound jarring.

But we must read it as He intended: a parable-like statement revealing God’s redemptive order. In the illustration:

• “Children” = the children of Israel, the people to whom the promises first came.
• “Bread” = the blessings of Messiah’s ministry.
• “First” matters = not “only,” but “in order.”

This is not Jesus denying mercy to Gentiles; it is Jesus clarifying the storyline of salvation. God began with Abraham (Genesis 12): He would make a nation, give His promises, and through that nation bless all the earth. Jesus honors that design, Israel first, then the nations.

Paul later summarizes the same pattern:

the gospel is “to the Jew first and also to the Greek” (Romans 1:16).

So the question in the moment is not whether God cares about Gentiles (He does), but whether this woman will trust Jesus enough to come to Him on His terms, inside God’s bigger plan, without entitlement.

Faith That Clings To Mercy Finds Deliverance

The glory of this story is that the woman does not walk away offended. She doesn’t posture. She doesn’t demand her “rights.” She stays low, stays trusting, and engages Jesus with faith.

Mark records her reply:

“Yes, Lord, yet even the little dogs under the table eat from the children’s crumbs.” (Mark 7:28)

This is not self-hatred. This is faith-filled humility. She is saying, in effect: “I understand the order. I’m not claiming status. I’m appealing to mercy. And I believe there is more than enough in You, even a crumb from You is stronger than the demon tormenting my child.”

Jesus answers:

“For this saying go your way; the demon has gone out of your daughter.” (Mark 7:29)

And she finds it just as He said:

“She found the demon gone out, and her daughter lying on the bed.” (Mark 7:30)

Don’t miss what Mark is teaching you from beginning to end here:

• Jesus’ authority over demons is effortless, He delivers with a word, even from a distance.
• Jesus’ mercy reaches beyond Israel, this Gentile woman becomes a living preview of the gospel going to the nations.
• Persistent, humble faith is not ignored, Jesus may test it, stretch it, and purify it, but He honors it.

Conclusion

Mark 7:24–30 invites you into deeper discipleship, past the easy stories and into the real Jesus: the Lord who sometimes delays, sometimes speaks in ways that test us, but always remains good, sovereign, and mighty to save.

So I want you to take three practices with you:

1. Keep coming low, fall at His feet in humility.
2. Keep asking, don’t interpret silence as rejection.
3. Keep trusting His order and wisdom, He is telling one unified redemption story, and you are included in His mercy through faith.

Jesus cannot be hidden from genuine faith, and no darkness can stand against His authority.

Lord Jesus, I come to You in humility, admitting my need and my limits. Teach me to trust You when You are silent and to persevere when answers feel delayed. Strengthen my faith to believe that even Your “crumbs” are more than enough for what I face, and that Your authority is greater than every power of darkness. Help me pray fervently, love persistently, and rest in Your wise plan of redemption for the whole world. Deliver those I’m pleading for, and let Your mercy be magnified in our lives. In Your name, amen.

Conclusion

Mark 7:24–30 invites you into deeper discipleship, past the easy stories and into the real Jesus: the Lord who sometimes delays, sometimes speaks in ways that test us, but always remains good, sovereign, and mighty to save.

So I want you to take three practices with you:

1. Keep coming low, fall at His feet in humility.
2. Keep asking, don’t interpret silence as rejection.
3. Keep trusting His order and wisdom, He is telling one unified redemption story, and you are included in His mercy through faith.

Jesus cannot be hidden from genuine faith, and no darkness can stand against His authority.

Closing Prayer

Lord Jesus, I come to You in humility, admitting my need and my limits. Teach me to trust You when You are silent and to persevere when answers feel delayed. Strengthen my faith to believe that even Your “crumbs” are more than enough for what I face, and that Your authority is greater than every power of darkness. Help me pray fervently, love persistently, and rest in Your wise plan of redemption for the whole world. Deliver those I’m pleading for, and let Your mercy be magnified in our lives. In Your name, amen.