Man's lost condition means that he is spiritually dead. This does not mean half dead or mostly dead. It means dead as in no life at all. Several years ago our neighbor's chicken tried to out-run a car and lost. Several hours later when I came by there wasn't much left except a bunch of feathers. That chicken was dead meaning that there was no life in it. Now I could stand next to it and try to persuade it to make a decision or encourage it to take the first step and then I would help it but it would be to no avail. Why? Because it has no life nor ability to do anything on it's own. In fact I would look like a fool trying to get that chicken to do something.
But friends, modern day religion is trying to do just that. False preachers are telling dead sinners to make a decision or to take the first step towards Christ and then He will save them. How utterly foolish! That is just as foolish as if I were to try to do that to the chicken. If man is indeed dead in his sins then outside of divine intervention he will remain there never coming to Christ. Because of his dead state he will never seek after God (Rom. 3:11).
How then are sinners saved? If God is pleased to save a sinner He will do it by the effectual working of the Spirit of God calling out, convicting and giving life to those whom "He hath chosen in Him before the foundation of the world". And when God does that, the sinner will flee to Christ because he then has life and the ability to do so. Left to ourselves, in our spiritually dead state, we will never come to God because we just will not want to. But if God intervenes by His grace and mercy, revealing to us our hopelessness and our desperate need of Christ and His righteousness, we come to Him because of a new nature within desiring Him.