She Had Every Reason to Quit

Pastor Pat opens with a question: how do you know if someone has great faith? We tend to measure it by big testimonies and big numbers. He points instead to people nobody has heard of: a youth pastor who took him surfing every week in freezing cold water, a mentor who told him, “Either God is enough for this moment or he just isn’t enough for me,” and his dad, who died of colon cancer when Pat was 12 and told him, “Whatever you do, it’s all about Jesus.”

Then he turns to Matthew 15. Jesus has just clashed with the Pharisees, and he goes to the region of Tyre and Sidon, the other side of the tracks. Matthew labels the woman who meets him a Canaanite on purpose, a name Jewish readers would have heard as a slur. She cries out, “Lord, Son of David, have mercy on me!” because her daughter is demon-possessed. Jesus says nothing. The disciples want her sent away. Jesus answers, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel.”

By every measure she is wrong: the wrong ethnicity, gender, religion and timing. Yet silence is not a no. Pat says “great faith keeps reaching” when God seems quiet, and he gives reasons God is sometimes silent. He may be testing whether we will chase him (Psalm 81). He may have already told us something we haven’t done. Often, Pat admits, he just stopped listening, or he didn’t like the outcome.

Next comes the hard line: “It is not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to the dogs.” The word means a house pet under the table, and Pat doesn’t soften it. The woman doesn’t stop to be offended. “Even the dogs eat the crumbs.” Pat says “great faith is too desperate to be offended,” and asks what we are willing to be embarrassed for, from Costco returns to a good parking spot. Jesus answers, “Woman, you have great faith!” Matthew uses those words for only one other person, the Roman centurion.

Pat names the challenge of living somewhere people look so good that desperation feels risky. His main to-do: don’t stop asking. He urges young people to put Jesus first, because “priority increases your capacity,” and closes by inviting anyone desperate for Jesus to come forward and ask for help.