Lemme try another angle... you wrote:
If God overtakes a person to believe and repent and that person MUST do so, how can that person have chosen God freely in the matter of salvation?
A person can only do whatever he has the
ability to do. An unregenerate man cannot cgoose Christ because his will is not free. It is enslaved to sin! Thus no matter what, the unregenerate man is not
able to choose Christ, anymore than you or I can "choose" to jump over the moon!
So God just awesomely, sovereignly
frees the will of a person (that's what we call
regeneration, or the New Birth),
enabling him to freely choose Christ.
Only Christians have free will! The unregenerate are
unable to choose Christ. No male can choose to become pregnant, for example, because it is not within his ability to become pregnant. No leoperd can change his spots. He lacks the
ability to do so, no matter how much he might want to. The
ability to follow Christ must first be supernaturally granted to an individual before he or she truly has any choice in the matter.
Does that help?
-Robin
