When I read these verses, there were two themes that stuck out to me. One was what God was able to do, and the other was what we are able to do. One of the main arguments against the LDS Church is that we aren't Christian because others think we believe in being saved by works. This is a huge misunderstanding probably due to vocabulary differences and other details of miscommunication. To set the record straight we DO believe in being saved by grace and that we can do nothing to get salvation because it is a gift - but we also believe that to be a true disciple of Christ we need to do what he has commanded us. We can't get to Heaven without Christ's merciful sacrifice and atonement - but we can and are expected to cultivate faith and then to act on that faith.
Why I bring this up is that a very large percentage of these scriptures are about what God is able to do, with only a few talking about what we are able to do. This reminded me of the argument above because in the end, it is about God and what he is able to do. Men can try and push us around, but God can do anything and is all powerful. The only thing he can't do is lie - and I believe that he is also incapable of not loving us. That means that the things that happen in our lives are because God is allowing them to happen, not because some other person is powerful enough to control our lives.
Someone I know asked me why doesn't God just show himself so we would know beyond a shadow of a doubt that he was here - arguing that we would still have our agency and we would still be able to make good or bad choices. My argument back is that knowing a god is not like knowing a person - it says in the scriptures so many times that when someone had a vision of God they had to be physically changed for a while because they would have died by exposure to his glory. Those people who did have those visions, became prophets. I believe that if we were faced with the God of the universe, who is all powerful, that our agency would be compromised. That we would be so impacted that we would have no desire to sin, and without sin we would be giving up the opportunity God has given us to grow closer to our Savior through the atonement. We would know beyond a shadow of a doubt, but then to me I think life would become a lot more like living through the motions until we died, without room for growth.
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