JoshT<br><br>Your wrote:<br><br>"But consider how I feel: I find it a little difficult to believe in a God that sees billions of people who will be born, all with an identical nature and all of them identical with respect as to how they would react to His life-changing power, and then He just goes and picks some. How? Did He shake them up in a giant bag and then just bestow His grace on whichever ones He randomly picked out?" <br><br>Your "feelings" are part of the sin problem, JoshT. How God 'picks' is His business...and He does so after His own wise counsel and good pleasure. PLUS...when you consider that God is no respector of persons (Acts 10:34)....unconditional election makes even more sense. <br><br>Also consider this with respect to anything taking us out of God's hands. <br><br>You say that NOTHING can take us out of God's hands, EXCEPT ourselves. <br><br>First, you've added a gross assumption to the clear and emphatic teaching of the text. I covered ALL THE BASES...nothing means nothing. <br><br>Second, if someone is born again, a new creature, justified, adopted by God, filled with the Spirit, etc....then SOMETHING, yes, SOMETHING must have been introduced into the equation to make a person CHANGE THEIR MIND/HEART/NATURE. So, can that mind changing 'something' be logic? Can that mind changing 'something' be temptation? Can it be regret? A better argument? Love of money? Sin? What can draws us from God. No, what's strong enough to PRY us out of an all-mighty God's hands? <br><br>God says NOTHING...but NOTHING can separate us from the love (and saving adoption) of God. The sheep are NOT fooled. They are not suckered. They are not cheated out of their inheritance. They do not reject their one and only Love....and if one in 100 'tried'...the Good Shepherd would bring them back.<br><br>In Him...FOREVER!!