Of course, God wants to save from sin the people He has created. But can He save us without our wanting salvation (justification, sanctification and glorification)? Don't say quickly that God is almighty and He can do whatever He wants! Yes, there are things He does not want, which, therefore, He cannot do. For example, He cannot tell lies. Similarly, He cannot save us without our wanting it. When He created us, He created us in His image, which includes the ability to make choices, and He 'cannot' force salvation on us without violating our free will. The result is that only those who want to be saved can get saved. And there is the big problem, because most people do not want to be saved, because they want to do their own will. That is why, even though in His heart God wants all people to be saved, He knows that only a few are going to be saved (1Ti.2:3,4;Mt.7:13,14).
Once we know that the reason why we are not getting saved as much as we wish is not that God is not helping us but that we are not seeking Him properly, our attention can focus on setting things right in our heart, mind and action (Ja.4:8). A godly man of the last century, A. W. Tozer, said, "It may be said without qualification that every man is as holy and as full of the Spirit as he wants to be. He may not be as full as he wishes he were, but he is most certainly as full as he wants to be." It must be obvious that we are not becoming as holy as we wish to be because in actual situations of life we are not always so keen to deny ourselves and to do God's will. We cannot follow Jesus and become like Jesus without doing what He tells us (Lk.9:23).
Can we now understand that in all that Jesus and the apostles have taught, a huge focus is on what we must and must not do? But modern preaching has changed the focus to 'encouraging' people by telling them what God is going to do, what He has promised, what He has made us in Christ, how He looks at us through the blood of Jesus, etc. If you have taken the trouble to listen to many popular preachers, isn't this what you find? Aren't such preachers who are popular and who draw crowds?
Of course, what God has done for us through Christ, what He is doing for us through the Holy Spirit now, and what He has promised for us in eternity are what form the foundation for our faith, what tell us what to look for and expect, and what encourage and give us hope. But just imagine what will happen if we know and understand all these things but we do not know how to work out our salvation accordingly in response to what the Holy Spirit is trying to do in our life (Php.2:12,13)? Isn't that what is actually happening to a lot of Christians?
Fallen man does not like to be told he is responsible for what he makes of his life. But he is really the one who ultimately makes the choices in the everyday situations of life, to please himself or God. If we realise this, we will start to cry out to God for help in every faculty of life.