Who is the selected one?

The urge of writing this down appeared to me several times this year. Now I am doing it in obeying and for the benefit of inspiring others.
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A friend of mine stayed with us for two weeks this year. IMO, He has everything in the physical world except a wife. During the two-week period I tried to persuade him to believe in Jesus and if he chooses to do so, God will definitely give him a wife custom made for him and more beyond his imagination. He sat through all these discussions and concluded: “God selected you to believe and selected me not to believe.”

God really determined who is to believe (and to save) and who is not at the beginning?

One day, a vision occurred to me. There was a lighted fireplace and bunches of branches on the floor next to the fireplace. An elderly person picked up a bunch of branches from the floor, went through them, sets aside a few and threw the rest into the fire. Then he picked up another handful bunch and did the same. I was carefully watching him. Right before he is ready to throw another bunch to the fire, suddenly I realized my friends were in there. The people I just had dinner with the past weekend, the couple who just had a lovely unexpected baby, …I stood up and cried out: “Wait! No!” I cried out to Him: “Lord, you want me to pray? I pray! If my prayers can save them, I pray hard!” I wept and wept because I could not endure the pain seeing the real persons I know were thrown into the fire. This elderly person paused, took out a few from the bunch, and grafted them to a trunk of a bigger tree. The grafted branches started to have life and grow baby branches.

Who is the selected one in the above scene? Can you taste a bit of the Father’s heart? If he is truly being selective, everything is pre-determined, why He needs to call out prayer warriors, pass His burden to His followers?

Regardless who we are and what we have done, do you know why you and me are still alive today? Because God is constantly trying to reach us and fellowship with us.

Whenever appropriate, I tried to tell people about God. Being through that scene, I know I can tolerate my friends’ “misunderstanding” but I can not bear the pain seeing their names not on the book of lamb on the judgment day.