Good thread. It likely won't convert any from one side to the other, but it will guide some that are still trying to feel their way through their beliefs.
I only started reading the Bible about five years ago. I've attended church all my life and before I picked up the Bible, I thought that I had a well rounded theology in place. I couldn't have been more wrong about that.
Reading the Bible caused my whole theological world to crumble apart. I was shocked to read verses that had never been taught on, nor addressed in any of the churches that I had ever attended. I never knew how much control of everything, everywhere, throughout all of time, God had always had.
* Not a sparrow falls from the sky apart from His will
* Every footstep is ordered by the Lord
* Belief is a gift from Him
* Repentance is a gift from Him
* When Saul commits suicide, it later says that it was the Lord who put him to death
* The Book of Life was written and complete before the foundation of the world
* He creates some vessels only for wrath, prepared beforehand for destruction
* He saved us and called us by His own grace before the ages began
* Those whom He predestined He also called, and those whom He called He also justified, and those whom He justified He also glorified
And on, and on, and on, and on it goes. I see his exhaustive control of humanity and the universe jump off of every page now. Nothing escapes His able hand.
I'm not here to debate anyone or to sway any reader, I'm only giving my testimony. And I can only conclude that my own beliefs are flawed and incomplete, that I don't have it all figured out, nor interpreted correctly. I know I'm deceived somewhere, somehow. But I see the total sovereignty of God in everything now and nothing has a chance of compelling me to think otherwise.
Anyway...
Here's my analogy, or whatever it might be...
I've never smoked crack cocaine. It never really crossed my path in a way to lure me into a life-destroying addiction. Now, I'll ask myself, "why me?", what kept me from going down that path? My answer is, God. God kept me from ending up in the gutter from crack cocaine. He decided before I was ever made, that crack cocaine would not take me. It was His plan, or more correctly, crack cocaine was NOT in His plan for me. I give Him the credit. I say that He is responsible for keeping me away from that.
I will not take the glory for not smoking crack cocaine. To Him be all the glory. And therefore, I don't have 'free will'. My steps were ordered, every last one of them, by the Lord.