My (Dion) comment: I'd be cautious with claiming logic for your position, dear HarleyD. The very nature of a gift is that it can be refused. You left out the fourth point: God can give a gift but a gift is not truly a gift until a recipient accepts it. If someone forces something on you it ceases to be a gift. If the Bible truly means "gift" then it has to mean a refusable offer.
You feel that a "gift is not a gift unless people can freely accept it". I've pointed out illustrations in scripture where this is not the case. God gives everyone the gift of life and substains us each day and not one of us ever asked to be born. If you had to "freely accept" everything that God gave you, you would be a very busy person.
Once we have faith we don't lose it simply because the nature of faith is precisely what it states: faith. If you "cease" having faith then you couldn't have had it to begin with. You will always be faithful (relatively speaking) simply because you have the gift of faith.
It's like intelligence. If God has given someone intelligence why would they want to refuse that intelligence? It goes against the very nature of the thing they now have.
You receive faith when you believe, neither before nor after. You receive it when you receive it. How hard is that to understand? Faith is believing. To believe is to have faith. It's a gift. You have the gift when you receive the gift. If you refuse the gift you don't have the gift. You don't have the gift unless and until you receive it.
You yourself used the language of "receive" in your silly question. I didn't answer your question not because I cannot but because I hoped you'd realize that you answered your question when you asked it and you answered it according to my position, not yours. You stated in your question that we receive faith and asked whether belief occurs before or after the reception. You believe in reception. If reception cannot be refused then there is no reception, only one-sided imposition.
If someone shoves a burning torch into my clenched fist I am not receiving it, I am being forced to hold it.
Your problem is that you don't stop to think about what certain words mean and imply and how they relate to other words. You have a procrustean bed of assumptions and you force words into your system even though the words themselves refute your claims.
I don't expect you to understand it. But since you tauntingly begged me to answer your question, here's your answer. It was already present in the question. For someone so proud of his logic, I would have thought you would have noticed.
Now why don't you just ignore the fact that I've just cleaned your clock logically and silently raise a completely unrelated and irrelevant topic like you always do.
You've read the parable of the Talents in Matthew's Gospel, I presume. I know a lot of people who have talents, such as intelligence, who choose not to use them to their fullest potential. It is too easy to be "safe" and not take chances. In the parable, the ruler is not happy with the man who rejected his gift. Note, nothing about faith - it is all about using the gifts that God gave us. We have that choice. We can bury it in the ground, or use it - as God meant it to be used.
Regards