How do we reconcile biblical statements about free will and election?

As humans, we have the free will to accept or deny the Holy Spirit. As far as the elected ones, he causes those whom he predestined to want to choose Him, according to his will. It's similar to when He hardened Pharaoh's heart until He was ready to release the people. It's all according to His will and to glorify Him.

He gives us all an invitation at some point or another. If he didn't none of us would choose Him because that is not our nature. The Holy Spirit knocks at our hearts, for those of us that are not chosen, ad we can chose. But He enters our heart for those that are chosen- God foreknows all of us and everything about us before we are born. He knew before the world began all of this, and how many sons and daughters He would have in the end.

Most people that are not Christ followers do not understand any of this, nor can they.

>Can we truly embrace both without giving undue deference to one at the expense of the other?

How do these two factors impact our initial coming to faith, our perseverance in faith, and our security in salvation?

What role does the Holy Spirit play in the interaction of these two factors?<

you ask three very basic questions.... which have caused enough volumes to be written to fill a very large library.... so any response you receive on YA will be VERY inadequate.... if you want to go into it a bit more feel free to contact me... here is what I will offer here

Yes... if one is willing to put in the effort to learn some basic facts so as to have a base to have faith that it can be achieved

acceptance of the basic facts, and having faith in the direction/instruction those fact provide, gives assurance that one can have faith that the goal of receiving Salvation can be reached.... it is the faith that is seen by God who knows the heart of those who come to Him..... those who come to God in faith.. in The way He prescribes, will receive His Free, and Eternal, Gift of Salvation

God's Holy Spirit is that form God uses to interact with man-kind, and to indwell those of The True Church..... if one is not open to God's Holy Spirit The Way to God is not open to them.... God's Holy Spirit provides the discernment needed to recognize The Truth

in other words.... study to learn The Truth.... if God is leading the Study... The Truth will be revealed

We don't always have free will. For example, I might will to fly up into the sky, but gravity holds me back.

It is written that God hardened Pharaoh's heart so that he would send his army after the Israelites. Pharaoh had just been defeated by plagues. It was not rational to think that he would win. Yet, he wasn't turning to God. He was lost and bound for Hell one way or the other. So hardening his heart did not change the ultimate outcome of his free will. Perhaps losing his armies as well might have humbled him further and thus made him more amenable to repentance. Nevertheless, we don't know that he was saved spiritually at all.

Psalm 23 begins "The LORD is my shepherd"

A shepherd allows his sheep free will to graze, yet if a sheep wanders off, the shepherd will leave his flock to go and bring that wanderer back. Just as when Jonah tried to escape his duty, a storm and a fish brought him back to the shores of Nineveh. Was that free will? No, it was election. Mary did not have a choice as to whether she wanted to bear the Lord's child. She chose to receive the news with gratitude, but she might have just as easily wept bitter tears that she was not normal.

We do not have a choice about our circumstances. Just as in the parable of the bags of gold, the servants didn't have a choice that they were entrusted with great wealth to invest. They didn't have a choice as to how much was entrusted to them. They each knew that they were expected to do the best they could with what they were given. The point to the parable is that those who are trustworthy with a little will be given more, but also, those who bury their talents are unworthy.

We can't see to what extent our circumstances are due to our free will choices and to what extent they are due to God's elections. That we learn from reading about Job. Job did everything right, but disaster befell him anyway. But the result of it all was that Job gained a greater understanding and closeness with God.

The reconciliation is right there: "Wherefore the rather, brethren, give diligence to make your calling and election sure ..." (2 Peter 1:10). I don't usually quote the KJV, but in this case its phrasing brings out the point best.

Notions of "election" are from the eternal point of view. God, eternal and omniscient, knows who are going to end up as "keepers" and who (if any) are not. But we don't live with an eternal point of view: we learn about the future by experiencing it, moment by moment. The outcome God already knows is one that, for us, depends on what we do. We are free to choose it.

There's a good discussion of this in C.S. Lewis. I rather think his notion of God's eternal point of view was influenced (as mine is) by the first chapter of Wells' great novel:

‘Our mental existences, which are immaterial and have no dimensions, are passing along the Time-Dimension with a uniform velocity from the cradle to the grave. Just as we should travel down if we began our existence fifty miles above the earth’s surface.’

-- H.G. Wells, "The Time Machine"

Anyway, with respect to this question, here is what Lewis produced:

“If ye put the question from within Time and are asking about possibilities, the answer is certain. The choice of ways is before you. Neither is closed. Any man may choose eternal death. Those who choose it will have it. But if ye are trying to leap on into eternity, if ye are trying to see the final state of all things as it will be (for so ye must speak) when there are no more possibilities left but only the Real, then ye ask what cannot be answered to mortal ears. Time is the very lens through which ye see—small and clear, as men see through the wrong end of a telescope—something that would otherwise be too big for ye to see at all. That thing is Freedom: the gift whereby ye most resemble your Maker and are yourselves parts of eternal reality. But ye can see it only through the lens of Time, in a little clear picture, through the inverted telescope. It is a picture of moments following one another and yourself in each moment making some choice that might have been otherwise. Neither the temporal succession nor the phantom of what ye might have chosen and didn’t is itself Freedom. They are a lens. The picture is a symbol: but it’s truer than any philosophical theorem (or, perhaps, than any mystic’s vision) that claims to go behind it. For every attempt to see the shape of eternity except through the lens of Time destroys your knowledge of Freedom. Witness the doctrine of Predestination which shows (truly enough) that eternal reality is not waiting for a future in which to be real; but at the price of removing Freedom which is the deeper truth of the two. And wouldn’t Universalism do the same? Ye cannot know eternal reality by a definition. Time itself, and all acts and events that fill Time, are the definition, and it must be lived.”

-- C.S. Lewis, "The Great Divorce"

The most important thing is the relationship you have with with the holy spirit and jesus and abba father. practicing the prescence and interaction and communication with him what needs to happen.

Any child can see the Bible was written by ignorant men. No need to reconcile anything - ignore the ancient text.

If you have free will, you can vote for whoever you want in an election.