Pilgrim wasn't saying, and God doesn't say, that you don't have a will.
You do, all men do, the scriptures freely attest to the fact that man has a will. But your will and my will and every man's will is in bondage to blindness and ignorance and pride and foolishnes and lusts, in short, to every kind of sin imaginable, until God takes the initiative to reveal The Truth to the man.
The reason the will is in bondage is that we don't see the blindness and ignorance, etc. that we are involved in (the scriptures say our "understanding is darkened") until the Spirit of God, in grace and mercy, through no merit in ourselves, but rather because of His sovereign love for whom He chooses, begins to powerfully show, reveal, disclose that blindness and ignorance and foolishness and pride and hypocrisy to the chosen vessel of mercy. That's what blindness is, the INABILITY to see. Being blind to one's blindness is the most hopeless and wretched of conditions.
Troy, this is done with power, divine power, so that the person is impressed, DEEPLY IMPRESSED and convicted with the REALITY and EXTENT and PERVASIVNESS, and UGLINESS and FILTHINESS of his depravity and blindness apart from the work of God. This work is a work of the Holy Spirit of God and no man can reveal it in it's power nor forget it completely once he has passed through it (though he may for a time be permitted to drift from it in order to again impress upon him his fallen nature and his continuing blindness with out the Lords help). In describing this process the scriptures say, among other things: "Thy people shall be willing in the day of Thy power," Ps 110:3a, and in John 6:45a; "It is written in the prophets, And they shall be all taught of God."
In this work of God, this divine merciful work, the vessel of mercy FEELS, powerfully feels, and begins to understand for the first time, his ignorance and helplessness, and no longer doubts that he is a complete and total sinner and needs, DESPERATELY NEEDS, a savior. He sees that the justice of God in the DAMNATION OF SINNERS IS JUST, is pure and right and HOLY AND GOOD and he tells the Lord, for the first time in true heart felt honesty, that he is sorry for his sins and for the PAIN THOSE SINS CAUSED CHRIST ON THE CROSS, not just the pain they have caused himself, and the offense those sins caused to the FATHER'S INFINATE HOLINESS and JUSTICE, and these things become real, not just words or ideas or concepts or doctrines.
As such, the person shown these things no longer argues with God about His sovereignty in choosing whom He wills, because he sees God for the first time as He really is, just and holy, and himself as he is, sinful and ignorant and utterly polluted. Arguing with God becomes the last thing on the mind "made willing in the day of His power" and he sees for the first time how prideful and ignorant such arguing is.
Until this happens some men talk about a savior, and think that they need one and even say that they do, but deep down in the hidden recesses of our prideful hearts, we are actually offended that we are dependant on God the Father to provide for a plan for our salvation, on HIS SON, JESUS CHRIST, for doing the actual work of deliverance from our hopeless, helpless condition in providing atonement for our sins and imputed righteousness for eternal life in God's PURE, CLEAN presence, and on His Spirit for teaching and revealing all of these things to us in their spiritual significance and meaning.
The experience of feeling and seeing these things in their spiritual reality and depth, or actually only some of it, for we are not capable of seeing all of it in our flesh, is a work of God's Spirit and He teaches the man in whom it occurs that his will is anything but free apart from the influences of His Spirit. This experience teaches him that his will has been perverted by his spiritual ignorance and blindness since he first left the womb, and that it is God "with whom he has to do", and God sees him as he is and can do with him what He wills, and whatever He chooses will be right, including sending him to eternal hell for his sins, if God so chooses.
The man's will is not lost or perverted or coereced in this process at all, in fact, it becomes more free than it has ever been, because in a measure he sees things for the first time, through God's grace, as they really are. Again, he sees himself as a desperately wicked sinner, bound for an eternal just punishment, in need of the Savior, the only Savior, Jesus Christ, the son of God, and him crucified, and he sees that God himself has dealt with him to reveal these realities.
As such, that sinner begins to beg and petition God, his only hope, for mercy, pure uncontaminated mercy, so that if He wills it, that person might be saved by the blood of the Lamb. Usually, he doesn't ask once or twice, but usually many times, depending on how long God thinks it right, and when the Lord thinks it right, then He will reveal something of His love, mercy, peace and pardon to that humbled soul, and it will be made clear that this peace and pardon is only in and through the work of Christ on the Cross and His atoning death for that person's sins PERSONALLY, who Christ has loved, personally, from the foundation of the world.
Troy, that is the Gospel. That is the good news.
And part of what makes it such good news is that it is a work of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit from first to last, from eternity past, for once you have been shown spiritually how deceitful above all things and desperatly wicked your heart is, you won't want to trust in your will or your "decision for Christ", or any of mans teachings, or anything, apart from a divine work of God in your will, making it "willing in the day of His power". You will see for the first time that anything else is a work of man, and thus not to be trusted.
At one time, I read a great number of Watchman Nee's books, and held great admiration for him, but I must tell you in all honesty that I read little or nothing in his works of the true Gospel I have described to you here and that the scriptures attest to from first to last. Indeed, the fact that Nee could make the statement he did about his "Spiritual Man", attesting to it's "perfection", and to do so late in his ministry, when all true believers have been humbled to a considerable degree, is a red flag of huge proportions as it reveals his blindness to his blindness. I don't know what God did in Watchman Nee's heart in those 20 years he spent in prison; from my recollection of the accounts I read, we know little of it. Perhaps he taught him the things that I have described here, I hope so; but I know this, what I have described here is the true Gospel in which "every mouth is stopped" before God and the sinner is abased in the dust and there is no free will, none what so ever.
Troy, the experience of the saints of God in the salvation of their eternal souls, in the process I have tried to describe above (very briefly and imperfectly I know) is a process that can be done rather quickly, if God wills, as in the case of Paul on the Damascus road and in the days following, or in the case of the Phillipian jailer, but more often, it takes weeks, months and years, as the Lord wills, and the humbling process continues (albeit usually with less intensity after a saint has been initially humbled and then manifestly pardoned as I have outlined) until a man is laid in the grave, and is finally free of his corrupt nature, which he has learned to abhore.
May the Lord in His Grace, "enlighten your understanding" and give you "eye salve to annoint your eyes" to see these things with spiritual eyes.
