Harley,
God gives us Grace to follow His will, but we are free to accept that Grace and follow His will for us. We are also free to reject Grace and follow our own will against what God wants us to do
Saint Paul is an example of freely not following the will of God when as Saul he approved of the stoning of Saint Stephan and than later followed the will of God freely when he followed the Catholic Church and Pope Saint Peter;)
God has laid out a perfect plan for our lives (Jer 29:11). It is our nature to constantly want to reject God's perfect plan because we are rebellious. God graciously prods us back on course with either His rod (harshly) or His staff (softly) every time we start to stray simply so He can protect His good name (Psalm 23). How far God will allow us to stray is understood only by Him.
We no more will follow God's commands than a two-year old would listen to us telling him not to touch a bit of candy in a candy store. It is like God giving us manna from heaven. We take the food of the angels and grind it, boil it, fry it and pervert it in every way imaginable. We just simply cannot take what God has given us, thank Him that He was kind enough to provide such a feast and be satisfied. Instead we grumble for the quail of earth when He has given us the bread of heaven. We are never satisfied. And if any of us Christians think we freely will follow God, all we need to do is ask ourselves how many times have we really wanted that quail instead of accepting what God has graciously provided.
Rom 8:14 For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God.
We HAVE to be led by the Holy Spirit, otherwise we would never do the things of God.
I believe we would agree that Paul was not a Christian when stoning Stephan. He wasn't given much choice when on the Damascus Road in his conversion. And as far as following Pope Peter, it seems like it was almost the other way around or at the very least they were coequal. Paul stood up to Peter (Gal) and felt his mission was to the Gentiles while Peter was to the Jews.