I have been told that God absolutely DOES need us to cooperate with Him. I have been told that this is the only way God can achieve His desire "to save all men".
Acceptance of His grace does not "earn" you points for salvation. Your salvation is not a simple one-moment event. One Orthodox priest once said it's like getting a visa to America and all you have is a dinghy at the coast of France (and a whole Atlantic Ocean in between)!
So if you do the work and row across, then you "earn" your salvation. God will point the way, but you are the one who is rowing. Why bother going to the trouble unless salvation is what awaits on the opposite shore?
Accepting Christ does not stop the world around you. You still have to deal with the world and everything it dishes out to you. Just because you are "saved" does not mean you now "rate" special treatment. How many Christians say "How could this happen to me? I go to Church, I accept Jesus as my Lord and Savior and yet these things happen to me..."
Yes, I completely agree with you here. In fact, I would even say that in a sense being "saved" will rate you worse treatment. God tells us not to worry about whether we will be persecuted, we definitely WILL BE! :)
Ultimately, what matters is not whether we "succeed" or not, but whether we remain Christ-like in our hearts. No one is immortal, so we are all slaves to death whether we believe or not. The only "guarantee" we have is our faith that Christ can unshackle us from it.
What? For us, the goal is not what is important? I'll bet you wouldn't say that if you just barely missed theosis. (I'm sure you won't. :) ... And, that sure doesn't sound like much of a guarantee to me. I don't see it as taking much faith to believe that Christ CAN do something. The trick is to know that He WILL. I believe that the Bible has plenty of passages that say just that.
Success is a relative term. It can be measured not with how much you have or make but how happy you are.
Sure, in our daily lives this is true and it is important to keep a Godly perspective. But in the eternal sense, success means winding up in the eternal presence of our Lord.
Actually, even rowing isn't necessary. Once Jesus is in the boat, you are at your destination.
Joh 6:21
. Then they willingly received him into the ship: and immediately the ship was at the land whither they went.