Practical Predestination

A. There are verses in the Bible that indicate that it is God who chooses us, that only the 'elect' are saved, it appears to not be up to us.
B. There are verses which indicate that we have a choice on how to live. That "anyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved" and that we are responsible for obeying God's commands.

A. Everytime you thank God for saving you, you are saying it was His choice; you don't deserve any credit for finding faith in Him. So, every time we do this we are practically believing in some form of predestination.
B. Everytime I repent of my sin, I'm saying it was my choice and not down to God, so I'm practically believing in free-will.

I think that this is something we humans are incapable of fully understanding. The expanations we come up with never totally cover everything.

So, what I do practically is:

1. Accept and thank God that He chose me and others (the elect). Rejoice in the confidence that this gives me that His acceptance of me as I am right now, full of sin and hurt, is therefore not dependant on my performance. And in evangelism, I'm not responsible for saving others as if it were down to my persuasive abilities. (The practical results of a predestination belief.)

2. Live as if I am responsible for everything I do. Take the attitude that all who call on Him will be saved and so never allow predestination ideas to stop me telling others about Christ. Never assume that what has happened is just God's will - it might be down to my failure or someone else's - fight injustice. (As if it were all free-will).

In others words, we can't get a middle ground understanding that explains everything. I think God did this intentionally so that we have to stay dependant on Him. We can't get our theology all exactly correct and go off and do Christian life by ourselves.

So, in our minds we hold these two extremes in tension, and so have to look to God Himself afresh in each thing that comes up in our lives.