I was agreeing with your post until this line
. We have everything to do with accepting Christ. We choose to soften our hearts and repent.
I think many blur the issue / have the issue blurred with the scripture by David and I think Paul that says ''there is no-one that does good''. But that is perhaps one of the hardest verses to understand. There is no short discussion with that line imho.
I suppose it really is an issue of God's sovereignty versus man's responsibility, would you say? I see what you're saying, and we can't acquit man of responsibility. We have to obey the divine commandment to repent, we're held responsible to do that. Jehovah puts that on responsibility the children of Israel at the end of Deuteronomy: "See, I have set before thee this day life and good, and death and evil, in that I command thee this day to love Jehovah thy God, to walk in His ways..." &c (Deuteronomy 30:15-16) and then further on, "I call heaven and earth to witness this day against you: life and death have I set before you, blessing and cursing: choose then life, that thou mayest live, thou and thy seed..." (Deuteronomy 30:19). The choice is set before every man. The children of Israel could either obey and love God, or they could disobey and hate Him. There was no middle ground, no third way.
I would still hold, however, that if my will hadn't been broken, I would still be in rejection of the Saviour. Isn't that what's involved in repentance? I don't know, I'm looking for help. Conviction, as I understand it, must precede repentance, and conviction is looking at myself and my history and seeing nothing of worth: on the contrary, a course and state which was under God's righteous judgement. As a writer in 'Things New & Old' has put it, "The eye had been turned in, and rightly so; and it had seen nothing but a deep, dark abyss of guilt and ruin." Repentance would be the giving up of my will, which I was pursuing for all my life up until the moment of conviction - a change of heart. Then salvation would follow repentance, when I throw myself on the mercy of a Saviour God, trusting in the blood and confessing the Lord Jesus as my Saviour. But, what begins the process? Conviction. And who convicts me? I believe it would be the Spirit of God Who convicts. Otherwise, I'd have gone on just as I was.
Yes, God's sovereignty and man's responsibility are very difficult for us to reconcile in our human minds. But we have to understand that they both go on together. We have been drawn to the Lord as Saviour by the Father, but He is set before us as the way, the truth, and the life. "Choose then life"!
"No man can come to me, except the Father which sent me draw him..." (John 6:44).
"I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father unless by me." (John 14:6).
We have a great and a wondrous God!