(1) FIRST, I have not denied God's Sovereignty over His Creation. That is just plain false. In fact I have affirmed His Sovereignty and nothing I have suggested to you is to the contrary. Don't frame a falsehood over what I have posted, so that you can try and attack your own mischaracterization.
(2) Second, you are apparently unable to comprehend that when God gives us free will and thus freedom to choose to love Him or not that such a GIFT subtracts nothing from God's Sovereignty.I will presume that you love someone, some other human being not you, so do you lose something of yourself when you love someone who is not you? Is something subtracted from you when you love someone else? The Bible teaches that in fact when we love others, it adds to us!
What Jesus gave as the two great commandments are absurdities if we believe we have no choice but to love God and love our neighbors, especially if love subtracts from us, somehow! To even entertain the lie that in loving someone else we lose something of our self is a lie whispered straight from the sulfurous mouth of satan!
(3) And third, God gave me NONE of His sovereignty in the sense of subtracting something from Him, because I cannot step outside of the Universe He created to exercise any degree of omnipotence over what He is Sovereign. even as I am free to choose to love Him or not, I have subtracted no sovereignty from Him in either act.
He created me in love, such that I may choose to love Him. Early int he letter to the Romans, God tells us that even the creation itself bears witness to His existence and the beauty of His work shows His love for us. John 3:16 says God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever ... Had he not created me with the ability to choose to love Him then we are but puppets, lead soldiers placed upon a game board. What God declares as His living Love for us becomes not a gift at all if we have no choice but to take it. It becomes a command, and commands are not delivered for love they are delivered for obedience. But of course if we start down the road of comprehending obedience before we learn what Gift means, well, that's grist for another mill.
If you cannot, or refuse to, see the reality of that cross being a gift offered to a free will because you somehow feel more secure in the notion that God created you with no choices in your destiny, then I can see how you have yet to comprehend the 'love letter' that is The Word made flesh Who dwelt among us.
You asked, "... if you could give God 100% control of your life would you do it?" Are you so dense that you don't yet realize God being the Creator and the attentive Sovereign of His Creation ALWAYS has the means to take 100% control, but --and this is crucial for you to understand, as it is fundamental to what the Bible teaches from cover to cover-- though God can take 100% control of results at any moment in any life at any place in The Universe, He has chosen in His Grace to not do so, so that you or I can have the illimitable treasure of His Life if we by our free will choose to accept it.
For the sake of the following thought experiment, assume that I have billions in my bank accounts. If I take $1000 out of your checking account merely on my own whim and offer it to you as a free gift, is it a gift? ... If I take $1000 out of my checking account and offer it to you as a free gift, is it a gift? What if you choose not to take what I offer from my account, is it any less an offered gift? Now apply the following clue: if I own the bank in which you have your checking account, what does that do to the first notion where I take from your account and offer it to you as a gift?
So you don't have to strain at gnats and swallow camels, I'll explain it to you: if I own the money in your checking account and offer it to you as if a gift, I'm not offering you a gift, I'm just showing my power over all the money in the bank.
Let's try a more difficult concept now ... If you fall in love with someone, are you going to demand they love you back? Can you compel them to do so just because you demand it? Well, you say, demanding someone love you to get their love is not in your power to do. You cannot force another human being to love you, but you believe God can do just that. You have based you premise in this thread on the notion that God forces love from you toward Him. Now you might object, asserting that I am changing the focal point, but did you not just pose a question to me that has at it's basis the notion that I have a right to choose: "if you could give God 100% control of your life would you do it?" Isn't your question absurd if I have no free will to give such control? Do you yet see how the notion you would have me accept makes 'giving', 'gifts', 'redemption', and 'love' non sequiturs?
If you want to be but an automaton predestined to whichever fate comes, no one, not even God will stop you from plunging into the abyss. BUT, if you choose to take His offered nail-scarred hand and be pulled away from the abyss, you will have, immediately, eternal life in Him. If you choose to argue with Him over offering you a gift, then you will be led astray by the one who is appointed as accuser of the brethren. God offers the gift of Salvation, now, at the moment you read these words. Please accept it as His Graceful Gift to you, for when you do accept the gift you magnify His Son Who died for you and died for any WHO WILL ACCEPT The Grace of God in Christ. If you wander off muttering to yourself that God is Sovereign and you really have no choice to make except what the strings upon you dictate, then you will lose this opportunity to have the gift, for your denial that you must choose, well that denial denies His Son the Glory in His work for you.
I write of course to those who read this essay, not just to you, HarleyD, for I do not know your heart, only God does. A promise from God is not a Promise if He gives no room to accept it or not to, it become a command not a Promise.
Paul taught us that the law was given as a schoolmaster, to teach us. Teach us what? Well, teach us just how far off the mark of His Righteousness we are. Then God offers, by His Grace toward us, the means to acquire His righteousness! Did Jesus expect the lawyer questioning Him about which commandment was greatest to have achieved in his lifetime the full measure of those two points of Love? No, not even! If to Love God or love our neighbor is not done because we can choose not to do so, then it is not love. And if we do not every day in every way and for an entire lifetime, with unbroken perfection, carry out these two Commandments, what is God's verdict toward us? And what has He made as a provision to 'escape' the verdict punishment? The two Great Commandments are defining God's character. The Ten Commandments are defining God's character. If you could live an entire life reflecting ONLY God's character, would you need a Savior? The Commandments are given to show you your inability with your free will to live as God exhibiting the character of God. God has chosen to write His character, His commandments, upon your heart, by FAITH, faithing in His Promises.
You stated in post #855 the following:
Here is what the London Baptist Confession states about "free will":
1._____ God hath endued the will of man with that natural liberty and power of acting upon choice, that it is neither forced, nor by any necessity of nature determined to do good or evil. ( Matthew 17:12; James 1:14; Deuteronomy 30:19 )
2._____ Man, in his state of innocency, had freedom and power to will and to do that which was good and well-pleasing to God, but yet was unstable, so that he might fall from it. ( Ecclesiastes 7:29; Genesis 3:6 )
3._____ Man, by his fall into a state of sin, hath wholly lost all ability of will to any spiritual good accompanying salvation; so as a natural man, being altogether averse from that good, and dead in sin, is not able by his own strength to convert himself, or to prepare himself thereunto. ( Romans 5:6; Romans 8:7; Ephesians 2:1, 5; Titus 3:3-5; John 6:44 )
4._____ When God converts a sinner, and translates him into the state of grace, he freeth him from his natural bondage under sin, and by his grace alone enables him freely to will and to do that which is spiritually good; yet so as that by reason of his remaining corruptions, he doth not perfectly, nor only will, that which is good, but doth also will that which is evil. ( Colossians 1:13; John 8:36; Philippians 2:13; Romans 7:15, 18, 19, 21, 23 )
5._____ This will of man is made perfectly and immutably free to good alone in the state of glory only. ( Ephesians 4:13 )