“My belief is that the believer enters that kingdom when they accept His free gift. “
That is very true. However, one must die daily and let go of the old before we can truly accept the new. If we are full of ourselves, we have no room to accept God.
The shift when true communion is accpted and we are in Him and He is in us is the real “Born Again” experience. At that moment we begin to perceive directly from our consciousness in our soul rather than being limited to the 5 senses of the physical body.
At that time we perceive a whole new reality, while still being in our physical bodies. It is very difficult to straddle the fence between two realities.
I believe he chooses us, rather than we choose him. I also believe that, once His, our “experience” with Him grows and we increase in knowledge as well as the blessings being His brings.
But salvation, itself, is, for us, the simplest part. Afterward we do the work, not to be saved, but because we want to please him. And some days we do well, and others not so well. It’s a growth process, and separate from salvation itself.
FWIW, I see the unsaved as “NPC’s” - Non Player Characters in a video game. They are the “Natural man” and basically animals. And all of the saved were once NPC’s. We still live in that natural man, with all of it’s necessary desires (e.g. the need for food) that can be exploited and bring sin, but the “spiritual man” that occupies that meat is born of God and has acquired “life everlasting.