Hi Josh,<br><br>I'm glad you joined the message board here. I have read countless postings of yours and others to you, but something you said in this post sort of jumped out at me, and this is it:<br><br>[color:blue]God can save anyone He chooses to: He simply has chosen to save those who humble themselves and hear His voice. But men do not have the power in themselves to follow God, this is why He has given us power by His grace to follow Him.</font color=blue><br><br>The thing it seems like you're not understanding is that true humility, for example--the kind that is pleasing to God--is good. It's a type of goodness, and without being born from above, we just don't have any of that in us. When the Bible says that we are dead in sin, it means it. We can't DO any good in the sense of godly goodness. True humility is one of those things. We simply don't possess the ability to be truly humble before God when we are outside of Christ. We also don't have a true forgiving spirit or true love for others, or any other of these things that you listed that God sees as good. We can have things which masquerade as them, but at best they are all tainted with sin.<br><br>You're right that we can only follow God when He gives us the power by His grace to do so, but that's SAVING grace. Until God's saving grace has acted efficaciously upon our hearts--until He has brought us to spiritual life--we cannot and will not follow Him, and we will not truly humble ourselves towards Him. <br><br>So, when you say: [color:blue]He simply has chosen to save those who humble themselves and hear His voice</font color=blue>, you are basically saying that God has chosen to save those who had this goodness in them in that they were truly humble and listened to Him. <br><br>Something to think about,<br>RefBap<br><br> <br>