This issue of free will versus God's sovereignty is a difficult one but
also quite interesting and certainly quite important. On one hand if we
take God to be in complete control of and intimately involved in everything
that happens and everything that we do then human reason seems to indicate
that we are preprogrammed or predestined in all that we do and therefore we
conclude that we have no free will. On the other hand, if we take it as
given that we have free will over our actions then human reason seems to
dictate that God interacts with us only on some occasions and that God is
only partially sovereign over us.
I think that the problem here is not based in the untruth of God's complete
sovereignty or the untruth of our free will for both are true. Rather, the
problem is in trying to make the two fit together through the flawed
process of human reason. That is, I argue the existence of a duality, at
least as far as we humans are concerned. In some cases it is appropriate
to focus on the sovereignty of God while in other cases it is appropriate
to focus on the human free will but in no case should we forget that both
are true. For example, when considering how it is that we came to be saved
from our sins we must focus on God's sovereignty lest we begin to think
that we some how deserved salvation because of something that we did. On
the other hand, when we are considering why we need salvation in the first
place we ought to focus on our free will and how we, apart from Christ,
blatantly chose to sin against God in all that we do.
Both God's sovereignty and human free will are necessary ideas in Christian
theology even though they seem, to us, to be antithetical.
The Society of Christian Philosophers has had some discussion of the matter
on their list serve. See, for example, the March archives at
http://www.calvin.edu/archive/scp/
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