Why does the gospel, and the process of coming to God, require us to lay down our own understanding and wisdom and knowledge and accept divine revelation as something that we can not know except a sovereign God chooses to reveal it to us? It seems God requires that everything of man and of man's understanding and will be excluded. Hence, as one example, during the most important time perhaps in Abraham's life, when God came and made covenant with him (Genesis 15,) I don't believe Abraham just decided to go to sleep but was purposefully cast into a deep sleep by the Lord. Is this God giving a foreshadowing and real time/space example that man's will and initiative will have nothing to do with God keeping His promises in the matter of salvation and God keeping His covenant promise? Infected man's power and ability is purposefully excluded. So God requires us to strip ourselves of all that we are and know, not just to squash us and be done with us. But so that we can experience divine revelation leading to regeneration leading to resurrection. So God's death sentence upon our natural man and his knowledge and his will is really a path to resurrection in divine life. The three Rs - Revelation - Regeneration - Resurrection. As far as our natural man is concerned God will not compromise or negotiate with it one iota. The Lord might say you may as well be asleep if you think you can play a part in this. You must lay it all down and renounce it so that your resurrection in Christ is not of him (man) who wills, nor of him (man) who runs (man's works), but of him who shows mercy (Romans 9:16).
Perhaps giving up our own understanding as far as divine things are concerned and having to rely on the necessity of relying upon only that which God can reveal and only to whom God chooses to reveal it to is one of the reasons the gospel is so offensive to many. They want to stay awake and claim to have a contribution to make to the process. But it won't work and God has purposefully seen to it that it won't work. How many of us can claim to be where we are at as Christians without acknowledging that it was all shown to us by divine revelation which we were unable to obtain by our own insight? In your opinion, why is God so unyielding on this point? Why is God so set against man bringing even just a little to the table to contribute?
Jut musing here.
Blessings