WHAT IS IRRESISTABLE GRACE?

I hear so many people using the term "irresistible grace" in negative terms.  They paint God as some ogre who snatches people up and drags them kicking and screaming to salvation.  But that is so far from the truth.  Let me explain God's irresistible grace with an example I know of personally.

I know of a married couple who, when they first met, the woman didn't want to have anything to do with the man she's now married to.  He persistently asked her out on dates, but she used any excuse she could come up with to not go out with him.  She didn't like him and had no desire to have a relationship with him.  But that didn't deter him.  He continued pursuing her and showered her with love until his persistence paid off and he broke through that wall of resistance she had put up.  His love changed her heart, and they got married and have been married for close to 40 years.  His persistence didn't force her to marry him, but it made her WILLING to marry him.  She went from resisting him to finding him irresistible.

That's the way it is with us.  See, God gives us a new heart.  He removes the stone cold, dead heart that hates God and wants nothing to do with Him and in its place, He puts in a soft heart of flesh that begins to desire Him.  When we come to the point that we realize Christ is our only hope for salvation, God, through the Holy Spirit, has already done the work in our heart and He makes us willing, not by force, but through His unrelenting pursuit of us and His matchless love, to cause us to finally surrender to Him.

That's what "irresistible grace" means.  His grace is resistible as long as that hard heart of stone is still there, but when He gives us the soft heart of flesh, we start finding His grace irresistible and we eventually surrender to follow Christ.