[Disclaimer: In none of the following is it in my heart to parenthetically add "as opposed to you". This is just my little story as plainly as I can tell it. :)]
I suppose I was something like an Arminian Protestant, although I had never heard the term before at the time. I believed it was totally up to me to decide to choose Christ or not, and that I would be cooperating with God throughout the rest of my life in trying not to sin as much, doing good deeds more than otherwise, and going to church. While I believed in the plain meaning of OSAS, the general plan was that I would keep God happy (thus proving to myself that my faith was true), and He would let me into Heaven.
Then, I studied with a mentor for several years in private Bible study. Interestingly, he never once mentioned the names of Calvin or Luther, and never mentioned "Reformed" theology. (I hadn't even heard of Reformed theology until FR.) Anyway, there were two things about this Bible study which really changed me. One was his focus on Christ himself. He harped all the time that EVERYTHING is about Christ, and nothing is about us. He did it so many times that I OFTEN wondered to myself "yeah, yeah, I get it, I heard you the first time". I didn't get it. It wasn't until later, so now I understand why he did it.
This really got me to start to change my thinking about my whole role in ....... "everything". At some point I had completely re-prioritized my outlook away from men (me) and toward Christ. I think it was at that time that I probably became a Calvinist, even though I still had no idea what that term meant. When I later learned about what Reformed theology was, here on FR, the concepts were absolutely simple to absorb.
The other area that changed me was his focus on scripture. He made me memorize tons of it. We made a game of having "verse-offs" every week to see who had done his homework. :) At the time I just thought that he knew best so I went along with it. I didn't understand why until later. I think in part he was showing me how easy it is for a person to fall back into his self-absorbed ways. Knowing the scriptures in your heart will always be a strong check against that. I see that same focus in the Reformers.
Sorry if this is more than you wanted you know. It just brought back a lot of memories so I went with it. :)
Dr. E always asks a good question: how does one resist the Holy Spirit? One can reject him, I suppose, but I'm not sure that's the same thing. Is it the same thing? Anyway, what I'm wondering is at what point of resisting grace does one lose their salvation or peform poorly enough not to earn it? However that's properly understood. IOW, is it a continuous resisting of grace or is it the final resistance seconds before you die that sends you to hell? I read that some of the Christian big-wigs used to postpone full acceptance of Christianity until they felt their mortality really closing in on them, then they would begin to take the faith and the sacraments seriously. Constantine is probably a good example of what I'm talking about here.
Earlier on in the thread someone remarked that Love is a dance, and Dr. E noted that it was a good metaphor, and added that it was God who was in the lead.
I thought that was good. But it might even be a better metaphor than previously suspected, especially from a Calvinist POV.
I studied dance in my earlier years and so I began to really think about the metaphor and it came to mind that God not only leads, HE is the Choreographer par excellence. And anyone that has taken any dance lessons knows that it's the choreographer that designs the whole dance and that in order for a performance to come off without a hitch there can't be any improvisation. It's a higly studied, indefatigably rehearsed routine. Modern dance is a little different, but I leave that metaphor to anyone that wants to go there.