(With a Divine Guarantee, No Fine Print)

“You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit—fruit that will last—and so that whatever you ask in my name the Father will give you.” (John 15:16)

Jesus drops this bombshell right in the middle of His farewell discourse, weaving together the threads of divine choice and human action in a way that leaves no room for half-hearted religion. Here we have the Son of God Himself, the most God-centered man who ever walked the earth, linking predestination not to some abstract theological puzzle but to the practical outworking of a believer’s life. He doesn’t stop at bare election for salvation; no, He presses on to appoint us for fruit that endures and prayers that hit their mark every time. If you’ve ever wondered why so many Christians limp along with unanswered petitions, mumbling about “God’s will” like it’s a cosmic lottery, this verse slices through the fog. Predestination, far from being a doctrine to tuck away in dusty seminary tomes, is God’s setup for a life where your requests become reality—because He rigged the game in your favor from eternity past. And if that sounds too bold, well, blame Jesus; He’s the one who said it.

I chose you. You did not choose me. I chose you. You did not choose me. I chose you. You did not choose me. (Okay, I’ll stop repeating it before it turns into a divine earworm.)

This is about predestination. In Romans 9, God said He chose to love one twin and hate the other before they were born or had made any choices of good or evil. God further hammers this point by saying that from a neutral lump of clay—not good or evil—He makes His own choice to shape one for honor and the other for common use. It’s the ultimate mic drop on free-will fantasies. God doesn’t wait for our resumes; He drafts us into His kingdom because He wants to. But Jesus doesn’t park there, as if predestination were just about getting a ticket to heaven. He appoints us “so that” we bear lasting fruit and receive whatever we ask in His name.

God’s sovereign based on what He wants; and so, it’s aimed at producing believers who pray boldly and watch heaven deliver. In other words, if you’re elect, you’re predestined not just to escape hell but to storm its gates with prayers that move mountains—literally, as Jesus teaches elsewhere (Mark 11:23).

Think about how Peter applies this in Acts 2. Fresh off Pentecost, he preaches repentance and baptism, then ties the promise of the Holy Spirit to “all whom the Lord our God will call” (Acts 2:39). Here, election isn’t some insider secret for mature saints; it’s the foundation for receiving power from on high. Peter assumes that God’s calling—His predestining work—doesn’t lead straight to forgiveness, but past that steppingstone to the outpouring of the Spirit for miracles and boldness. If God sovereignly elects you, He sovereignly empowers you to ask and receive. No asterisks, no fine print about “if it’s His will.” The reprobates? They’re left out, not because God couldn’t save them, but because He didn’t choose to—His hatred fixed before the foundation of the world, as Romans 9 unflinchingly states. Yet for the chosen, predestination is a launchpad for faith that demands and gets results. It’s like God handing you a loaded gun and saying, “Fire away; I’ve already loaded it with victory.” If you don’t shoot, then that’s on your unbelief, not His preloaded victory.

Now, contrast this with the faith-fumblers who twist sovereignty into a wet blanket over prayer. You’ve heard them: “Pray, but remember, God’s will might be ‘no’—He’s sovereign, after all.” They parade predestination as if it handcuffs our requests, turning God into a cosmic veto machine. But Jesus flips that script. In John 15, He uses election to embolden us: because you’re chosen, ask big and watch the Father deliver. It’s not arrogance; it’s obedience to the doctrine. These naysayers, often cloaked in Reformed garb, spout “double predestination” or “hard determinism” like it’s profound, but they miss the point. God’s absolute control does negate our agency; and in doing so it guarantees that we align with His promises in faith, so that reality bends at our faith filled words. James echoes this: “The prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well; the Lord will raise them up” (James 5:15). Will, not might. Sovereignty here isn’t a barrier—it’s the muscle behind the miracle.

Jesus is talking about the category of election and predestination here. However, it’s not the same topic as in Romans 9. Romans 9 was about election unto salvation itself, but Jesus isn’t talking about salvation—he’s focusing on the life we live after salvation. Jesus said He chose us to bear much fruit, which means good works. But Jesus doesn’t harp on good works the way most folks do, like tallying up brownie points. No, Jesus specifically means this type of good work: “so that whatever you ask in my name the Father will give you.” Jesus’ version of good works is about asking in His name, in faith, and then getting whatever we ask for. (Think of it as heaven’s express delivery service—ask, believe, receive.) This is how Jesus teaches what good works are. But setting aside how Jesus flips the usual definition on its head, let’s zero in on the main point.

Jesus says He chose us—or in other words, predestined and elected us—to ask for anything in His name and receive it from the Father. This is an utter and complete death knell to the “if God wills” blasphemy. (Yeah, I said it—adding that caveat is like ordering a pizza and then wondering if the delivery guy feels like showing up.) Jesus says He has predestined you to get all answers to your prayers with a resounding yes. Jesus says what you ask for is the thing the Father will give. There’s no way to misinterpret this without exposing yourself as faithless. It’s too plain and obvious—so if you twist it, you might as well lift up your shirt and flash your doubts to the world. The thing you ask is the thing you get. This is the doctrine of God; this is the doctrine of Jesus Christ. Jesus says He has elected you for this. Thus, the idea of “if it is God’s will” is absolute nonsense and a rejection of Jesus’ doctrine. It rejects God’s predestination and Jesus’ prayer doctrine outright.

Take the Gentile woman in Matthew 15. Jesus initially rebuffs her: it’s not her time, not her covenant. But she persists with a clever argument rooted in faith, and boom—her daughter is healed. Jesus commends her “great faith,” overriding the timeline because her trust in Him demanded it. Predestination didn’t lock her out; her faith unlocked the door. Or consider Hezekiah, pleading for more years despite God’s decree of death (2 Kings 20). God relents, adding fifteen years. Sovereignty yields to faith? No—God sovereignly designed it so that faith accesses extensions of grace. These stories aren’t exceptions; they’re blueprints. If predestination meant prayers bounce off heaven’s ceiling, why bother appointing us to ask and receive? Jesus ties election to fruitful asking precisely because God’s choice equips us to pray with punch.

The critics? They’re often the ones peddling unbelief under pious labels. They balk at “name it and claim it,” but Jesus said, “Whatever you ask in my name…” (John 14:13). They cry “man-centered” when we claim mountains obey us, yet Jesus commanded it (Mark 11:23). Their version of sovereignty shrinks God to a reluctant giver, doling out crumbs if He feels like it. But Scripture paints Him as the ultimate benefactor, swearing by Himself to bless Abraham’s seed—and we’re that seed through faith (Galatians 3:29). Predestination secures this: chosen ones aren’t left guessing; they’re appointed to pray victoriously. If your theology leaves you pleading without expecting, it’s defective—more aligned with fatalism than biblical faith.

People often wield the sovereignty and predestination of God in the form of “if God wills” to sidestep Jesus’ faith and prayer doctrine. But since Jesus directly ties predestination and election to “when you ask in My name, you get the thing you ask for,” you cannot use God’s predestination against always-answered prayer. It would create a contradiction: God has predestined always-answered prayers and God has not predestined always-answered prayers. (That’s like saying Schrödinger’s cat is both saved and unsaved—nonsense.) Jesus appealed to the law of contradiction in Mark 12:35-37 to interpret scripture. Thus, you cannot have a contradiction in God’s sovereignty without being flat-out wrong.

Jesus says He has sovereignly elected you to pray in His name and get the thing you ask for. Thus, the phrase “if God wills” is irrelevant. The will of God in this context is irrelevant because what God has elected is the relevant factor; the thing Jesus has elected is for you to ask for something and have the Father give it to you. The relevant thing is “your will,” therefore, not “God’s will.” The thing that “you want” or that aligns with “your will” is the key factor established by God’s sovereign election and predestination. To focus on God’s will in this circumstance of prayer is to trample and piss on the predestination and election of God like it’s a worthless pile of trash.

The positive teaching of God’s election in our prayers—to get whatever we want—has been trampled upon by the church for centuries, as they play the part of the whore with Satan as the lead actor. (Cue the dramatic music: Satan’s ultimate plot twist—joining the church to rewrite the script.) The devil fears Christians who can pray and get what they want. Satan has no defense against such an unstoppable force. (It’s like bringing a knife to a prayer-gun fight.) Thus, he infiltrated the church and convinced many to reject Jesus’ doctrine of predestination and faith, stopping the church from wielding its heavenly power. When the church isn’t using its unstoppable power, it’s weak and vulnerable to attacks from Satan and his thugs.

Jesus didn’t pray that way; He commanded storms and demons because He knew the Father’s plan included His authority. We’re in Him, so the same goes for us; we have His name, His authority and His same Spirit anointed power. So, Step up and pray like your election depends on it—because in God’s brilliant design, it empowers it. And if the mountains don’t move? Check your faith, not His sovereignty. After all, He elected you for answered prayers.

Let us turn the tide. It might feel like it’s late in the game, because it’s been 2,000 years since Jesus’ death and resurrection. But why would I care? I was born in this time, and even if it is late in the game, I will be like the returning White Gandalf—more powerful than ever, staff glowing and all.

Let us not be embarrassed by Jesus’ predestination doctrine. Let us not be embarrassed by Jesus’ faith and prayer doctrine. I give you permission to believe Jesus, despite what the faithless say about His teachings. I am telling you: You are allowed to believe Jesus. You should only care about what He says, not what the faithless—who have no healing and hardly any evidence of commonly answered prayers—babble on about. After all, if prayers were a video game, Jesus just handed you the cheat code for infinite wins.

Think about the Garden of Eden, that pristine paradise where God placed Adam and Eve before sin threw its wrench into the divine machinery. Every tree bearing fruit was there for the taking, lush and abundant, dripping with natural sweetness. We’re talking figs, dates, pomegranates—fruits loaded with sugars and carbohydrates that would make today’s low-carb crusaders faint in horror. And yet, God surveyed His handiwork and called it good, not just tolerable or “okay in moderation,” but unequivocally good. No fine print about blood sugar spikes or insulin resistance. In that unfallen world, sugar flowed like rivers from the trees, a testament to Yahweh’s generous provision, designed to fuel humanity’s dominion over creation without a hint of backlash.

Eden wasn’t a vegan utopia or a keto nightmare; it was God’s blueprint for human flourishing. Genesis 1:29 lays it out plainly: “Then God said, ‘I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food.'” Fruits, with their inherent sugars, weren’t temptations lurking in the shadows; they were front and center, essential to the mandate of stewardship and enjoyment. Before the fall, bodies functioned in perfect harmony with creation; no diabetes lurking around the corner, no metabolic disorders to fret over. Adam and Eve metabolized those sweet bounties flawlessly, their physical forms obeying the Creator’s design without rebellion. To partake freely wasn’t gluttony; it was obedience, a joyful acknowledgment of dependence on the One who provides all things richly for our enjoyment, as 1 Timothy 6:17 reminds us.

Fast forward to our post-Eden reality, where the curse of sin has tainted everything, including how we view something as simple as an apple. The fall introduced thorns and thistles, toil and pain, and yes, vulnerabilities in our bodies that make natural sugars seem like enemies rather than allies. Satan also became the god of this earth and with his demons takes advantage of the curse and victimizes people with pain, sickness and diseases ( Acts 10:38). Sickness entered the picture not as God’s original intent but as a consequence of rebellion. Yet, here’s where defective theology creeps in—folks start blaming sugar itself, as if the fruit trees were booby traps set by a capricious deity. In our hyper-focused nutrition culture, even modest amounts—like figs with breakfast, an apple at lunch, a mango for dinner—get labeled “bad” because I had too many carbs and sugars. What God pronounced good, they call evil.

And what does the fall have to do with us today? Everything and nothing, depending on where you stand in Christ. Galatians 3:13 declares, “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us.” If you’re in Him, that curse— including its grip on your health—has been shattered. Romans 8:11 drives it home: “And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies because of his Spirit who lives in you.” Your body isn’t defined by the curse’s decay; it’s dominated by the Spirit’s life-giving power. The curse does not energize my mortal body with death; no, the Spirit energizes my mortal body with Jesus’ life. Grace reigns, not the remnants of Eden’s fallout. If your health still bows to dietary fears, perhaps you’ve missed the memo on redemption— you’re acting as if the cross was a partial fix, leaving you to fend off sugar with human willpower.

The Bible isn’t silent on moderation. We are not to be gluttons. Yet, Scripture celebrates sweetness as a divine gift. Psalm 19:10 likens God’s words to honey, sweeter than the honeycomb. Proverbs 24:13 advises, “Eat honey, my son, for it is good; honey from the comb is sweet to your taste.” Even in the wilderness, God fed Israel manna that tasted like wafers made with honey (Exodus 16:31)—a supernatural provision laced with sweetness, no health warnings attached. Jesus Himself multiplied loaves—carbohydrate central—and fish, feeding thousands without a lecture on glycemic indexes (John 6:1-14). If sugar were the villain some make it out to be, why didn’t the Master Healer warn against it?

This paranoia about sugar betrays a deeper issue: unbelief masquerading as wisdom. When we obsess over “Did I have too much fructose today?” we’re training our minds to start with sensory experiences and human efforts rather than God’s revelation and His power. It’s carnality in a health-food wrapper, no different from the man enslaved to lust or greed. Romans 8:6 warns, “The mind governed by the flesh is death, but the mind governed by the Spirit is life and peace.” Constantly tweaking diets to avoid imagined threats fights against being spiritual; it’s epistemology rooted in the flesh, power drawn from self-discipline instead of faith. The Bible endorses supernatural health through God’s power, not your plate. Medicine? It doesn’t condemn it outright, but neither does it commend it for your health needs. If adjusting your intake helps you feel better, fine—the Scripture leaves room for that without judgment. But chasing nutrition, like a broken record playing in your mind? That’s sidelining the Healer for a salad.

This focus on nutrition isn’t just misguided—it’s a straight path to carnality, the very mindset Scripture warns against in Romans 8:5-8, where those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, leading to death and enmity with God. When you obsess over macros, glycemic loads, or whether that banana will spike your insulin, you’re starting your epistemology with sensory data—how the body feels, what the scale says, or what the latest study claims—rather than with God’s self-authenticating Word as the first principle. It’s human speculation dressed in lab coats, inductive guessing that pretends to be wisdom but is anti-logic at its core. Deduction from Scripture demands we begin with God’s promises: healing by His stripes, life-giving Spirit in our mortal bodies, abundance without fear. But nutrition paranoia flips the script, making your gut the god and your willpower your savior. No wonder it breeds anxiety; it’s flesh-dependent, not faith-dependent.

Worse, this carnal lens trains you for human effort over supernatural provision, turning health into a self-made idol rather than a received gift. Day in, day out, scanning labels and portioning plates becomes your ritual, a subtle works-righteousness that sidelines prayer, faith confession, and commanding sickness to flee in Jesus’ name. God’s provision is miraculous—manna from heaven, water from rock, multiplied loaves with carbs galore—yet you opt for the sweat of your brow, post-fall style. Faith says, “Speak to the mountain of diabetes and it moves”; carnality says, “Track your carbs or perish.” One unleashes God’s power; the other exhausts you in futility. And let’s be real—if you’re more tuned to your Fitbit than the Spirit’s whisper, you’ve already lost the battle before it starts.

Consider the bleeding woman in Mark 5:25-34. She spent everything on physicians, only to worsen under their care. Human efforts failed spectacularly. Then, with a touch of faith, she tapped into Jesus’ power and was healed instantly. No dietary overhaul required. Or King Asa in 2 Chronicles 16:12, who sought doctors alone for his diseased feet and died—his fault wasn’t medicine per se, but excluding God from the equation. Contrast that with the centurion’s faith in Matthew 8:5-13: “Just say the word, and my servant will be healed.” No questions about the servant’s carb intake; faith unleashed the miracle. In our redemption, we’re called to this level—commanding health by faith, not cowering before calories.

Labeling sugar “bad” even in Eden’s context dishonors the Creator. Those fruit trees weren’t accidents; they were intentional, reflecting God’s goodness. To fear them now is to limit the Holy One of Israel, as Psalm 78:41 describes the Israelites who grumbled despite manna from heaven. They confessed lack amid abundance; we do the same when we treat God’s provisions with suspicion. Post-fall, yes, bodies can rebel—diabetes is real, a symptom of the curse. But Jesus was already a  curse for us. Isaiah 53:4-5 proclaims, “Surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering… by his wounds we are healed.” Jesus bore the curse, including its physical tolls, so we could reclaim Eden’s freedom. Not a literal return to the garden, but a spiritual one where faith makes all things possible, even a fantastic metabolism (Mark 9:23). This is why Moses was full of vigor to the last of his days. The curse, because he was under Abraham’s gospel in faith, held no sway over his body. The curse was afraid of Moses. The curse is afraid of the man who has faith in God.

Tradition peddles a gospel of moderation laced with fear—eat this, avoid that, or else. But Jesus offers abundance: “I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full” (John 10:10). Full life includes enjoying creation without paranoia. Sure, gluttony tests God (Matthew 4:7), but so does unbelief that hoards health through human schemes. The reprobate theologians—those faith-fumblers who dilute the promises—would have you limping through life, confessing weakness instead of victory. They slap “God’s will” on sickness, forgetting that healing glorifies Him, as in John 9:3 where the blind man’s restoration displayed God’s work, not his affliction.

So, what’s the takeaway? Embrace the sugar flowing in Eden as a shadow of God’s goodness, redeemed in Christ. Don’t idolize diets or demonize delights; let faith govern your health. If a mango calls your name, enjoy it with gratitude, trusting the Spirit for vitality. And if sickness knocks, resist it like Satan himself—command it gone in Jesus’ name. After all, in this divine setup, you’re not the victim of carbs; you’re the victor through faith. Unbelief might leave you counting calories till kingdom come, but faith? It moves mountains—and maybe sweetens your tea while at it.

In conclusion, Eden’s sweetness wasn’t a setup for failure but a reality of God’s provision. The curse twisted it, Satan takes advantage of it, but redemption restores. Today we have faith over fear, Spirit over spreadsheets. God’s not stingy with His gifts; why should we be suspicious. If we are trained, not by carnal starting points, but faith in God’s promises, then the curse will fear us. Diabetes will tremble in fear before a man with faith, as loudly as demons scream in fear before the man who wields Jesus’ name.

Confess with me. “I have been redeemed from the curse, because Jesus already took the curse away from me. He has already given me the gospel of Abraham’s excessive blessings, excessive increase and the abundance of the Spirit and miracles. The sugar God called good is still good for me today. When I eat sugar it nourishes my body, makes my blood healthy, makes my bones limber and strengthens my flesh. Sugar is not bad for me, it does not create diseases and health issues for me; rather, sugar makes me healthier. In Jesus Name.”