Pro Free Will

I was practically born in the Methodist church. I do not remember attending to any message about "Free Will", perhaps, because it is impossible to find "free will" in the Bible. However, I developed (due to reading, thinking, etc.) a reasoning like this:

• God created everything good and saw that it was all good. So, how does evil entered in the world?
• God created some kind of evil as in Isaiah 45:7: I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things. God created the possibility of evil when He gave Free Will to his creatures.
• Free Will is the basis for love. Would someone create a machine that says "I love you dear creator" and feel pleased about it? Certainly not. Love has meaning when based on free will, when the creature decides by itself to love its creator and it has a will that is free from the creator.
• The evil becomes real when the creature decides not to love its creator, up to this moment, we have just the potential of evil.
• The creature is responsible and must be punished for bad decisions in face of free will. In absence of free will, we have no responsibility. God is fair to punish its creatures when the creatures make bad decisions. 
• A bad decision is to look for its own glory, instead of praising the Creator. Satan and humans made bad decisions.
• The saints are those who chose Jesus, accepted that He died in their place. 
• We, as humans, must search the Lord as in Matthew 6:33 But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. The Lord expects that all humanity respond to it. He loves all human being, gave free will to each one, and expects that everyone seeks for Him.

Basically, it was my belief. For me, the book "Mere Christianity" of C S Lewis gave some comfort supporting these ideas. I even developed some despise to Calvinists. I thought that they were some kind of Christian fundamentalists that love so much their own doctrine despite sending many to hell. Who can claim in good conscience that is saved by Jesus? Even worse, how can one claim that some other guy is destined to hell? 

I thought that it was ridiculous to have eternal life assurance. 

My reasoning was like this:

• In Jeremiah 17:9, we read: The heart is deceitful above all things  and beyond cure.  Who can understand it? Certainly, I knew that although I claimed to have chosen Jesus, accepted Him in my heart, I was a sinner. There were many things that I did not like to do, but I did it anyway. Why did I sin? Because, my heart was not all prone to the Lord. But, did I have control of my heart? Jeremiah said that my heart was deceitful and I could not agree more.
• I was certain that perseverance is crucial to salvation. In Revelation 2:7, we read: 7 Whoever has ears, let them hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To the one who is victorious, I will give the right to eat from the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God. If life is a battle and the Lord demands victory and my heart is deceitful, how can I be sure that I will be choosing the Lord up to my death? If the Lord demands perseverance, how can I be certain about it? I can not. I had many cases to base it. I saw many in church falling. Many that I thought were really saved but showed up to be a great deception. 
• As the heart is deceitful, no one can claim eternal life assurance because no one can say anything about his own perseverance. Perhaps, one could claim that is saved today, but can not say anything about tomorrow. So everyone could at maximum have a fragile salvation because salvation depends on each one hearts, each one choices, each one seeking. 

That was my reasoning 10 years ago. I had concluded that we can't believe in salvation assurance and free will at the same time. They are incompatible, at least, for the "free will" that is defined as the will free from the Lord's will. Given what I had in the Methodist church, some verses of Bible craved on my head, the reasoning was quite good. In fact, it was somehow against the main stream belief in the Methodist claiming Free Will and Salvation Assurance at the same time. 

Now, I think very different. I will write about it other day, but my problems began when I could not say to myself: "I have eternal life assurance" and who claims it, is lying to himself. I wanted to prove it to others whenever possible.