at he preaching of the gospel opens the heart sister when the ne hears about Jesus suffering and dying for us because of Gods deep love towards us . That message he sent out is what opens our heart .
most kings hide behind thier people to the last man they defend the king , our king stepped off his throne and died to save us …..the gospel message is how God does his inner work hearing it , letting it be true the message is living and active and works ta goblet in us to. BRing us to God
what God has done for mankind is found in the gospel it is finished he finished the work necassary to save any sinner. The hearing of that true message opens the heart to belief
Come on man, the text says "the Lord opened her heart", no matter how the Lord does this it doesn't change the truth that the Lord did it. For some reason you feel when we give God ALL credit and ALL glory for our salvation that we are somehow saying we didn't make any choses, or that we deny that we have a will of our own. We are not. What I am saying is that God gets ALL credit for the choice you made and ALL glory. That NONE of it at all belongs to us. I do believe that God saved me the way He did to really nail this point down for me personally, it's also a reason I address this topic with the passion I do.
I made the choice you speak of, I was in church and heard the gospel, then an alter call was given and I responded, with all my heart I repeated the prayer and was declared saved there in front of everyone, told I could write down the date and hang my hat on the fact I was saved, was also baptized a few weeks later as well. But guess what? I was NOT saved, I was a false convert. I didn't know it then of course and thought I was a Christian 100%However.....
Years later I hit the hardest trial of my life in the form of a motorcycle wreak that took all function from my right (and dominant) arm. For 2 solid years I walked around with my head down defeated and wishing for nothing but death. I couldn't go 5 minutes without thinking about killing myself, and couldn't control it. All that I could talk about was how much I hated my situation to the point I couldn't stand to hear myself talk about it either and was starting to just stop saying anything that wasn't a direct answer to someone speaking to me.
This also exposed my fake faith. At this point I thought I was a Christian and what I found was it wasn't helping anything at all. So while I didn't get mad at God or Jesus, I found them useless and turned from them. I just went with hopelessness. After 2 years of this I got to a point that it was all just too much and I couldn't handle it anymore. Even though I wanted to die SO bad and had an EASY way to do it with my right arm having absolutely no feeling in it at all, I could literally hammer a stake through it and not feel anything, so cutting my wrist wouldn't have even made me twitch when I could cut the whole arm off without feeling it. I would run all the justification through my head like a checklist, my wife can find someone more able to love and take care of her, my job could replace me no problem, even my father will get over it eventually (was a lie, he wouldn't have), but I'd get to my two sons and knew that no one would love them and take care of them the way I do, so I was stuck here. I don't want that to sound noble at all, it was not. I hated the fact I was "stuck here".
So the day I didn't need to write down to remember, 9-29-13, was coming to a close and I was home alone for the first time in I don't know how long, but this was when everything came to a head. I had just carried everything too long and couldn't bare the weight any longer. When I hit my knees I wasn't making a decision or choice. If I EVER believed in God before, I did not in this moment. When I hit my knees I was not praying or calling to God to "save me now", to be honest God wasn't even a thought in my head when I hit my knees. I hit them crying out "I can't do this anymore, I can't do this anymore , I can't do this anymore, World you win and I lose. I QUIT!!!"
That was it, I then pick my blubbering tail up off the floor, dried myself off, and went to bed.
It was the next day on my work lunchbreak that it hit me and hit me hard. I realized that after two years of nonstop uncontrollable suicidal thoughts, "I HAVEN'T THOUGHT ABOUT KILLING MYSELF ALL DAY!!!!"
I KNEW 2 things then and there, #1 whatever this was, it was God. #2 Jesus was His Son. For there my hunger for His word took hold and He lead me strait to John, by chapter 3 I was at the reception desk telling a sister "I think I was born again", and was. I was spiritually resurrected that day and reconnected to Hi Spirit.
I wanted to share this to show you why I give God ALL credit and can keep none for myself. While I understand your argument and even why you make it, I even agree up to a point, I just see too much credit being taken for you and that belongs to God. If I would have been saved that first time, when "I" made the choice, I'd probably been right beside you arguing the same exact thing. However.....
God saved me in a way that I could not take any credit for it even if I wanted to. I had no clue what was even going on that night when He granted me repentance. So I say, even to the person that responds to the alter call and is saved then and there in truth, that God gets ALL the glory for that as well. Even for "your choice", God gets ALL glory,