You did not choose me, but I chose you (John 15:16)

You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you. - John 15:16

Only, when someone truly seeks to follow Jesus, will they come to truly believe that Jesus is the incarnate God. But most people are waiting until they truly believe that Jesus is the incarnate God before they will truly commit to following Him.

Any man who genuinely tries to follow Jesus’s teaching will be met with overwhelming evidence that His teaching is from God. It will not need to be taken on “faith” it will simply be self evident - it will reveal itself simply to be an accurate illustration of the world around him.

As Corrie Ten Boom recounted about her days evangelizing fellow prisoners in a Nazi concentration camp, "I had believed the Bible always. But reading it now had nothing to do with belief, it was simply a description of the way things were."

But we want to wait until we are sure that the Bible is true before we trust it. We are waiting until we are sure that Jesus is Lord before we will truly accept Him as such.

Thus mankind is caught in a double bind. We're stuck in a loop. We don't believe because we don't do. And we don't do because we don't believe.

No one can escape this loop outside the grace of God. This is why Jesus tells His followers that they did not choose Him, but that He chose them.

And also why He said, “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him” (John 6:44)

This is why Paul says, "No one can say 'Jesus is Lord' except by the Holy Spirit". (1 Cor 12:3)

And also, Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the faith God has distributed to each of you. (Romans 12:3)

Saving faith in Jesus is a gift granted by the grace of God "not of works, lest any man should boast." No man can know that Jesus is Lord until He reveals Himself to him. Until this happens, man is in the dark. And it is impossible for him to understand just how dark this darkness is until he encounters the Light.

People are waiting to declare Jesus their Lord - declare Him as most important thing in their life - until he proves Himself to them. They think that their current default position is “logical” and until Jesus is proven, they will stick with what they “know.” This type of person does not realize that there is no default position. Everyone by virtue of being alive has something placed in the top slot of their value hierarchy - ie what they hold to be most important in life. For some people this is money, others this is family, but for most people this is themselves.

Mankind thinks that by putting himself first, his life will organize itself properly and he will find true happiness. And despite the fact that his experience continually and emphatically tells him otherwise, he continues to declare Himself Lord through the way he lives his life.

Only when Man finally realizes that he himself is not God, and truly comes to terms with the dust that he is, will his eyes will be opened and will he discover his true identity as a son of the Most High.

The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit - John 3:8