When God Feels Silent:
Ask, Seek, Knock –
Houston Christians' Guide
to Persistent Prayer
(2025 Sermon)
The Phone Call That Never Came
A few weeks ago, I sat with Margaret in the hospital waiting room. Her husband Rick was in surgery, and she was doing that thing we all do when we're nervous: checking her phone every thirty seconds. Not for social media or news updates. She was waiting for the surgeon to call.
"Pastor Jon," she said after the third hour, "I've been praying nonstop. Why does it feel like God put me on hold?"
I've been there. You've been there. We dial up heaven with our urgent requests, and instead of a clear answer, we get what feels like celestial voicemail. "Your prayer is important to us. Please continue holding."
Jesus knew we'd feel this way. That's why, right in the middle of His most famous sermon, He gave us some of the most audacious promises in all of Scripture. Promises that sound almost too good to be true.
The Three Verbs That Change Everything
Listen to how Jesus puts it in Matthew 7:7-11:
"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; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened."
Three verbs. Ask. Seek. Knock. Simple enough for a child to understand, yet profound enough that theologians have spent centuries unpacking them. But here's what struck me this week as I prepared this message: Jesus doesn't just tell us to pray. He tells us to persist.
The Greek verbs here are all in the present imperative. That's grammar speak for "keep on doing it." Keep asking. Keep seeking. Keep knocking. It's not a one-and-done transaction. It's a relationship.
Think about it this way. When my daughter was four, she didn't just ask me once for breakfast and then give up if I didn't immediately appear with pancakes. She asked, she followed me to the kitchen, she tugged on my shirt. She persisted because she trusted that Dad would provide. Her persistence wasn't doubt; it was confidence.
When Heaven Seems Closed for Business
But let's be honest. Sometimes it feels like we're knocking on a door that nobody's behind. We pray about the diagnosis, and it gets worse. We pray about the job, and the rejection letter comes anyway. We pray about the marriage, and the papers still get filed.
I remember Tom, a longtime member here, telling me about the eighteen months he prayed for his son to come home from addiction. "Pastor, I wore out three sets of knee pads," he said, only half joking. "Some nights I wondered if God had blocked my number."
This is where the prophet Jeremiah helps us understand what Jesus is really saying. In Jeremiah 29:11-14, God speaks to people in exile, people who felt abandoned, people whose prayers seemed to bounce off the ceiling:
"For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Then you will call on me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart."
Notice something crucial here. God doesn't promise immediate delivery. He promises ultimate purpose. The Israelites would spend seventy years in Babylon before this promise came true. Seventy years! That's longer than most of us have been alive. Yet God says, "I have plans. Good plans. Keep seeking."
The Father Who Knows How to Give
Jesus then does something brilliant. He shifts from the mechanical act of prayer to the relational heart of it:
"Which of you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!"
I love this because Jesus basically says, "Look, you're all pretty flawed parents, and even you wouldn't mess with your kids like that." No dad hands his hungry child a rock painted to look like a sandwich. No mom serves rubber fish for dinner.
But here's where we need to think deeper. Sometimes what we think is bread might actually be a stone. Sometimes what looks like a fish to us might be a snake. God, in His perfect parenting, sometimes says no to our good requests to give us His best gifts.
The Stewardship of Persistence
This series is about Kingdom Stewardship, and you might wonder: what does persistent prayer have to do with stewardship? Everything.
Prayer is not just something we do; it's something we steward. We've been entrusted with direct access to the throne room of the universe. The Creator of galaxies takes our calls. The Sustainer of atoms hears our whispers. That's a resource more valuable than any stock portfolio.
But like any resource, we can waste it, hoard it, or invest it wisely.
Some of us waste our prayer access by treating God like a cosmic vending machine. Insert prayer, receive blessing. When the machine doesn't deliver, we kick it and walk away.
Others hoard their prayer access, saving it for emergencies only. "I don't want to bother God with my little problems," they say, as if the God who numbers the hairs on your head is too busy to care about your daily struggles.
But Jesus calls us to invest our prayer access wisely, persistently, relationally. To keep asking, seeking, knocking, not because God is hard of hearing, but because the very act of persistent prayer changes us.
What Persistence Produces
You see, when Tom prayed for eighteen months for his addicted son, God wasn't ignoring him. God was doing something in Tom. By month six, Tom had started a support group for other parents. By month twelve, he was leading recovery Bible studies. By month eighteen, when his son finally did come home, Tom had become the man his son needed him to be.
The persistence produced something prayer alone couldn't: transformation.
This is what Margaret discovered in that hospital waiting room. As we sat there together, she said something profound: "You know what, Pastor? Three hours ago I was asking God to fix Jim. Now I'm asking God to be with Jim. And to be with me. And somehow, He is."
The asking had led to seeking. The seeking had led to finding, not answers, but Presence.
The Houston Hurricane Test
We Houstonians know something about persistence. How many of us have rebuilt after floods? Harvey, Ike, Allison... the list goes on. We know what it's like to knock on insurance doors, seek contractors, ask for help, and keep going when everything in us wants to quit.
I'll never forget the Sunday after Harvey when half our sanctuary was still damp and we worshiped anyway. Betty Chen stood up during prayer time and said, "I lost everything in my house, but I found something too. I found out that when you have nothing left but God, God is enough."
That's not a bumper sticker theology. That's a woman who kept knocking even when the door seemed rusted shut. And she found it opened to riches she didn't know existed.
The Secret of the Seeking
Here's something I've learned after thirty years of ministry: God is less interested in our perfect prayers than our persistent presence. He's less concerned with our eloquent words than our honest hearts.
The seeking itself is part of the finding. The knocking itself is part of the opening.
Think about Jacob wrestling with God all night. God could have pinned him in two seconds, but instead they wrestled until dawn. Why? Because there's something about the struggle that prepares us for the blessing.
Or consider the Syrophoenician woman who wouldn't take no for an answer when she approached Jesus about her daughter. Jesus seemed to rebuff her, but she persisted. Her persistence revealed a faith that even amazed Jesus.
When Prayer Becomes Relationship
This is the shift that changes everything: when we stop seeing prayer as a transaction and start seeing it as a relationship.
My wife doesn't always give me what I ask for. Sometimes I ask for pizza for dinner and she makes salad because she loves me too much to let me eat pizza every night. Sometimes I want to buy something foolish and she reminds me we're saving for our kids' college. Her "no" is still love. Her delay is still care.
How much more with God?
When we pray, "God, take away this struggle," and He doesn't, maybe He's saying, "I'd rather walk through it with you."
When we pray, "God, change this person," and He doesn't, maybe He's saying, "Let me change you first."
When we pray, "God, open this door," and He doesn't, maybe He's saying, "I'm protecting you from what's behind it."
The Gift Better Than Our Requests
Jesus ends this teaching with a promise that should revolutionize how we pray: "How much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!"
In Luke's version of this same teaching, Jesus gets specific about what the "good gift" is: the Holy Spirit. In other words, we ask for stuff, and God gives us Himself.
We knock looking for opportunities, and God opens the door to His presence.
We seek solutions, and we find the Solution Giver.
This is why persistent prayer is actually an act of stewardship. We're not just managing our requests; we're cultivating our relationship with the Request Receiver. We're not just seeking answers; we're seeking the Answerer.
The Practice of Persistence
So how do we actually do this? How do we keep asking when we're tired of asking? How do we keep seeking when we've looked everywhere? How do we keep knocking when our knuckles are bloody?
First, remember that persistence doesn't mean repetition. You don't have to pray the same exact prayer every day like you're trying to wear God down. Persistence means staying in the conversation.
Second, vary your approach. Ask in the morning. Seek through Scripture at lunch. Knock through worship in the evening. Let your whole life become a prayer.
Third, pray with others. This is why we gather as a church. When your faith feels weak, borrow mine. When my knocking arm gets tired, you knock for me. We're not meant to persist alone.
Fourth, document the journey. Keep a prayer journal, not just of requests but of revelations. You'll be amazed how God was answering all along in ways you didn't expect.
Finally, trust the timeline. God's clock doesn't match ours. What feels like divine delay might be perfect timing. What seems like rejection might be redirection.
The St. John's Way of Prayer
This is why at St. John's, we don't just have prayer as a program; we have it as a practice. Our Tuesday morning prayer group has been meeting for fifteen years. Some of the same people, praying for some of the same things, and yet they keep gathering. Why? Because they've learned that the gathering itself is part of the gift.
Our youth group doesn't just study prayer; they practice it. Last month, they kept a 24-hour prayer vigil for our community. One teenager told me, "I signed up for 3 AM thinking it would be boring. But somewhere around 3:30, I felt like God was actually there. Like, actually there."
That's what persistence produces: actual presence.
The Door That's Already Opening
Here's what I want you to remember as we prepare for Thanksgiving next week: Every one of us has prayers that seem unanswered. Every one of us has knocked on doors that seem locked. But the very fact that you're still asking, still seeking, still knocking, means you haven't given up on God.
And if you haven't given up on God, I have good news: He definitely hasn't given up on you.
The door you're knocking on? It's already beginning to open. You might not see it yet, but the hinges are moving. The lock is turning. Not because you knocked loud enough or long enough, but because the One behind the door has been waiting for you all along.
Margaret's husband? His surgery went perfectly. But that's not the real miracle. The real miracle is what Margaret told me a week later: "I thought I was just asking God to save Jim's life. But God saved something in me too. My fear. My need to control. My assumption that God only loves me when He says yes. All of that died in that waiting room."
Your Next Knock
So here's my invitation as we close: What door do you need to knock on this week? What request have you given up on that God might be inviting you to bring back? What seeking have you abandoned that might be just one more seek away from finding?
Don't make it complicated. Jesus didn't. Ask. Seek. Knock. Three simple words that children can understand and saints spend lifetimes practicing.
And remember, you're not knocking on the door of a reluctant deity who needs to be convinced. You're knocking on the door of a Father who's already decided to give you good gifts. Sometimes the gift is what we asked for. Sometimes the gift is something better. And sometimes, the gift is simply learning that the door was never locked at all.
We were just so focused on knocking that we forgot to try the handle.
This week, try the handle. Keep asking, but also listen. Keep seeking, but also notice what you've already found. Keep knocking, but also realize that maybe, just maybe, God's been knocking too, waiting for you to let Him in.
After all, as Jesus said in Revelation, "Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with that person, and they with me."
The God we're seeking? He's seeking us harder. The door we're knocking on? He's on both sides of it. The gift we're asking for? We already have it. We have Him.
And in the end, that's more than enough. That's everything.
We are blessed to bless; we receive to give. But first, we ask, we seek, we knock. And in the asking, seeking, knocking, we discover that the real treasure was never the answer.
It was learning to trust the Answerer.
Let us pray.
Loving Lord, we come to You with hands full of requests and hearts full of need. We've knocked on so many doors we've lost count. We've sought in so many places we're dizzy from the searching. But today, right now, we ask for the grace to keep asking, the strength to keep seeking, the faith to keep knocking. Not because You're far away, but because You're so close we sometimes miss You. Help us steward our prayers not as last resorts but as first responses. Help us trust Your timeline, Your answers, Your presence. And when we're tired of knocking, remind us that You're knocking too, waiting to come in and share a meal, share life, share eternity. In Jesus' name, who taught us to persist in prayer, Amen.
Have you ever wondered how Presbyterians approach Bible study? Weird question, right. But seriously, have you ever wondered? Here's the answer to that question: Bible Study Near Me:
What to Expect at St. John's Weekly Groups. And to go even deeper into it there's this:
Bible Study in Houston: Where to Find Scripture Study That Goes Deeper. Or, if you're feeling a little crazy, maybe even check out this radical topic:
Best Non-Mega Church Houston: Why St. John's Presbyterian Offers Real Faith Beyond Hype
