If I Am Predestinated, Why Must I Still Strive?
1) Direct Answer
Yes, you must strive. Predestination is not a license to drift; it is God’s purpose that you be holy, overcome, and walk in obedience. The very proof of predestination is that you press on.
2) Scriptural Explanation
- The Bible says we were “chosen…that we should be holy” (Ephesians 1:4) and “predestinated to be conformed to the image of His Son” (Romans 8:29). That calls for a life, not laziness.
- “Make your calling and election sure” (2 Peter 1:10). If election were a reason to coast, the Scripture would not tell you to confirm it by diligence.
- “Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God which worketh in you” (Philippians 2:12-13). His work in you makes you work it out.
- Jesus said, “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me” (John 10:27). The predestinated sheep are marked by following.
- “Strive to enter in at the strait gate” (Luke 13:24). The narrow way is not careless—it’s earnest.
- “Follow peace… and holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord” (Hebrews 12:14).
- Grace “teaches us… to deny ungodliness” and to live soberly and godly (Titus 2:11-12).
- “Shall we continue in sin…? God forbid” (Romans 6:1-2). Real grace never excuses sin.
- The overcomer promises are to those who overcome, not to the indifferent (Revelation 2–3).
- The Bride is shown as those who came through and overcame—washed, faithful, serving, reigning (Revelation 7:9-17; Revelation 20:4). That is a life of victory, not apathy.
3) Simple Clarifying Logic
- Predestination sets the end, and God also ordains the means to that end. He ordained repentance, faith, obedience, holiness, prayer, suffering, correction, and perseverance as the pathway of the elect. The same God who wrote your name also writes your walk.
- You don’t strive to become the elect; you strive because the elect Seed is in you. Life presses. A lamb nature follows the Shepherd; a holy calling produces a holy living.
- If someone says, “If I’m predestinated, I can live as I please,” ask: Where is the fear of God? Where is the chastening that God gives sons? (Hebrews 12:6-8). Where is the following of the Voice? (John 10:27). The foundation of God stands sure—“Let everyone that nameth the name of Christ depart from iniquity” (2 Timothy 2:19).
- Faith without works is dead (James 2:17). Works don’t save, but they show the life that does.
4) Reinforcing Statement
Election gives assurance, not apathy. The Bride is ordained to overcome; therefore she strives. The Seed in you makes you walk, war, and win.
Ask a Follow-up Question
What did the Laodicean Church Age (our age) Angel (- messenger) Say about this?
Ranked passages from the local William Branham sermon and Church Age Book database. Relevance is relative, not a statement of doctrinal certainty.
The Spoken Word is the original seed
62-0318 §107
Christ couldn't help being what He was. He was the Son of God. That's it. See what I mean now? See if you were intended, you see the Word of God, you believe it; because why?---there's something new. Why? Have you ever heard of strain in a family? A son will kind of impersonate his father, or the mother, or the grandfather, or the grandmother. That's strain in a family. You've heard of it, haven't you? Well, that's the same thing from predestination. You were supposed to be here in the right way at the beginning, b...
Token
63-0901M §127
What happened? Now, they were shut up. "No revival is going to happen here." "Our denomination won't sponsor such." "We'll not have that kind of nonsense among us." "I forbid any of you to go to that meeting." Jericho, right in the line of the damned. But there must have been some tape boys slipped in somewhere, for the predestinated seed. They slipped over to her house and played some tapes. She made her own house a church to receive the Message. (They still got them, you know.) The Message got to the predestinate...
Israel and the Church: Israel at the Red Sea, part 2
53-0327 §13
Therefore, I believe that God set examples. He saved Abraham unconditional. He made a covenant with man, and man always breaks his covenant. But man has always tried to find some way to save himself, trying to make himself. It comes from a strain in the Garden of Eden. When man realized he had sinned, he tried to make himself a religion, a covering. The word religion means "covering." And Adam and Eve sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves a religion. And since then it's been a strain of man down through th...
Abraham and his Seed after him
61-0416 §26
But, you see, Abraham, not being nothing himself, he was called by election. Then if Abraham was called by election, then his seed after him has to be called by election. That's right. Jesus said, "No man can come to me, except my Father draws him first. And all that the Father hath given me will come to me." That's the reason you just preach the gospel in its plainness, yet the elected sheep of God will hear that and catch it right quick. And they'll believe that baptism of the Holy Ghost---where others will walk...
Possessing the enemy's gates
59-1108 §64
...ow, here stands a man by me; I've never seen him, know nothing about him. We're strangers to one another. We do not know each other. God knows both of us. Now, by a divine gift, if I can just by a gifted... Now, those gifts are born in you, God predestinated before the foundation of the world. How many knows that? So, it wouldn't be anything I had to take the gift, God just chose that. I never chose that; He chose that, see. Like the prophets of the Old Testament, and the different people, they were predestinated t...