How do we know that God doesn't make our decisions for us, as in, He causes His Elect to make a specific choice? The Scriptures are riddled with this form of Power and God isn't bashful about His responsibility.
The Scriptures, as in the entire Bible, scream with the Power and control that God has over all things. How we miss this, well . . . Paul explains that the Plan of God was kept hidden from the beginning. At what point does this come into the equation? At what point do we accept the Lord's responsibility?
I have read through the list you gave me, and you have put a lot of diligent work into it. I believe God controls many of our actions, but not all of them. I don't know if you are old enough to remember text-based computer games. A story would be given, up to a point. Then the user would get to choose. The choice would determine how the story would play out.
I never used to know about God's planning, even now I don't fully understand, but I do believe after reading scripture that God controls many of the things we do. I have also encountered a story of a woman who fasted and prayed for 40 days. At the end of 40 days, God showed her books in heaven. They had detailed stories, even down to the exact amount of money we would earn in a week. But she said the stories were flexible, that God showed her they moved with our prayers and actions. Our lack of action could affect our own and other people's stories.
This is the way I see God's story writing. It is detailed, but flexible based on our choices.
I state it this way in the book:
It may seem hard to imagine the world having free choice and God being able to know the future, but I am a computer programmer by trade and have studied Artificial Intelligence, there is one branch of knowledge that can predict all possible outcomes in a simulation or game, the computer can essentially know within a system of free choices, all possible outcomes. God is a lot faster and smarter than a simple computer. The only way however that the computer can “know” the end from the beginning, is to set constraints on choices, making stories, or outcomes that are restricted, which simplifies computation. For God to know every event that could potentially happen He would need to put constraints on man’s stories. And we see this is what God appears to have done:
And He has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth, and has determined their preappointed times and the boundaries of their dwellings, so that they should seek the Lord, in the hope that they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us; (NKJV, Act 17:26-27)
