limited sovereignty?

The question, over on codepoke's blog (yeah, memo to self, Christmas holiday project is to learn how to do links) as part of a series on predestination, was whether God sovereignly limits His sovereignty. This was my take on the subject ..

... I think this is the crux issue (to me, where I'm at in my thinking) God is absolutely sovereign, has all power, dominion etc etc -- yes of course He does, those things go with the definition of being God. But what does He do with them withing creation? Or, to put it another way, of course He is God, but what sort of God is He? Is He most concerned with proving His power (what does he have to prove?) or with revealing his character (which is what is really under attack)

Yeah sure, when the godness of God is at issue He will demonstrate it (classic example: Elijah and the prophets of Baal on top of Mt Carmel) Yet even then, He gives the smallest needful demonstration to prove His point. he could have uncreated them all, done incredible, terrifying things, yet all he did was burn up the sacrifice. He was (if I can use such language of God) fighting for the soul of Israel, putting forth just enough proof of His reality over Baal to rekindle their confused and broken faith ..

To put this back on topic, what i am saying is yes, i believe God restrains the full exercise of His sovereignty in this present world .. not because He doesn't totally know what will happen (He is omniscient) but because he genuinely leaves some wriggle room for the free exercise of human faith and love. He so set up this world not just to be a puppet master pulling the strings (if that's what God is really up to salvation history was a very strange way of going about it) but to woo something from us, which for some incomprehensible reason (called love, i think) He really wants from us ..