Yes. But notice the means God uses to convince, persuade or change man's will.
So...If I've understood you correctly...you are saying "Yes, it is impossible for God to 'override' the will of man in any situation."
Given the following paragraph, it is likely you think that God does not override the will but He, like the prosecution or defense council, is pleading His case to us in a desperate attempt for us to agree with Him. Is that a fair understanding of what you're arguing?
It would seem that you have created a "theological" construct here where man, not God, has the final say. Even so, it would seem that man is--at the very least--co-sovereign with God.
Your line of reasoning, if I've rightly understood it, necessarily means that God has created beings that are either co-equal or superior to Him in some way.
This, of course, bears absolutely no resemblance to anything we see in the Bible.
With Jonah, did God work internally to supernaturally change Jonah's nature and desires so as to make him want to preach in Ninevah? No. He used "normative" or "outward" means so as to allow him to respond and be convinced to do what otherwise he didn't want to do. Same is true of many throughout scripture. I think it is a mistake to presume God is somehow inwardly manipulating the nature and desires of man to casually determine their choices. He could, no doubt, but in scripture He just doesn't work that way.
The problem here, though, is that as the account of Jonah plays out, it becomes crystal clear that Jonah
never wants to preach to Nineveh. But, again, the point of the Book of Jonah is not Jonah's initial response to flee God's presence...it is Jonah's attitude toward the Ninevites. Jonah's rebellion against God was not a problem with God, per se. Rather, Jonah didn't want the Ninevites to be spared God's wrath. The over-arching point of Jonah, then, is taking the Gospel to even those whom you don't like. For us today, then, it would apply to taking the Gospel to Muslims as it would have applied in the late 60s to taking the Gospel to Vietnam or in the 40s and 50s taking the Gospel to Germany and/or Japan.
All of this is to say that it was not God's plan to change Jonah's inward nature. It was God's goal all along to have Jonah go through the motions with outward actions lacking the internal change.
Be that as it may, it is a mistake to say "God doesn't manipulate the nature and desires of man to casually determine their choices" because there is so many places with so many people that say otherwise. Abraham's desires were changed; Jacob's entire nature was changed. David writes, in the Psalms, about a "new heart;" the prophet Ezekiel writes about having a heart replacement (stone--flesh).
What is more--since the Bible clearly states that the heart of man is desperately wicked and desiring of only evil continually--it is easy to see that those who come to be worshipers of God are not the same, they have been changed.
It would appear that you are suggesting that all that needs to be changed is our outward actions. This leads down the road that the Pharisees followed and that many today follow--outward obedience with inward deadness. Hence the passage "This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me."
The heart is the issue. It always has been and it always will be. Only God can change a heart.
The Archangel
like sin for instance.