Thanks Mike this is a pretty deep topic. I wish in my own sphere I had fellow believers who could dialogue on points like this. Unfortunately at my church I can’t name one person I could rationally discuss the ideas with.
Years ago I did some study of Dr. S. Lewis Johnson’s sermons and among them he had some good teaching on the topic which is still available.
https://sljinstitute.net/johannine-theology/efficacious-grace-of-the-drawing-of-the-given/
by Mike Ratliff
13 Jesus answered and said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again; 14 but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him shall never thirst; but the water that I will give him will become in him a well of water springing up to eternal life.” John 4:13-14 (NASB)
Efficacious adj. producing the desired effect – from The Oxford New Desk Dictionary and Thesaurus Third Edition.
Christian faith has appeared to many an easy thing; nay, not a few even reckon it among the social virtues, as it were; and this they do because they have not made proof of it experimentally, and have never tasted of what efficacy it is. For it is not possible for any man to write well about it, or to understand well what is rightly written, who has not at some time tasted of its…
View original post 1,491 more words