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A question many people ask is why God doesn't simply destroy Satan and prevent him from doing so much harm. God can do it if He wanted to. He is the one who created Lucifer as an angel, and Lucifer rebelled against God and became Satan. God could have destroyed him at that point. But now Satan and his group of demons try their maximum to deceive and turn people away from God, and also to oppress them. God places restrictions on Satan about how much he can do, as we see from the story of Job. But we must remember that people can give demons access through their carelessness, from where they attack them.

To understand the situation, we have to go back to the way God created man. God created man in His image (Ge.1:27). A part of this image is our 'sovereignty', our free will, that gives us the ability to choose what we want to do. We must understand that it is only because we have this free will that we are able to love, because if love is forced, it cannot be love. But this free will also opens up the possibility that we could choose to do wrong. That was what Adam and Eve did when they disobeyed God. Now, salvation is to bring us back to the place where things can be right between us and God again. Forgiveness of our sins is just the beginning of this salvation. After that we need to learn, or God wants to teach us, how to choose to do His will at all times and then enjoy the blessings He has prepared for us. We can't enjoy God's blessings if, after we have been forgiven, we continue to do what we like. But Jesus has shown us the way of taking up our cross daily, with the intention of dying to self and living for God, denying ourselves and following Jesus (Lk.9:23).

Here is where Satan comes in, to tempt and oppose us when we seek to follow Jesus. He comes to us with deceptive offers as he did with Eve, and in this way, God is able to give us opportunities to choose God. We see that it was the Holy Spirit who led Jesus into the desert to be tempted by Satan for forty days (Mt.4:1). Temptations are necessary for us because it is when we are tempted to choose sin and its pleasures that we can learn to deny ourselves and overcome. That is how we can partake of the divine nature, to be transformed into the character of God.

But what can happen is not only that we can get deceived by the schemes of Satan and fall into sin, but also that through our carelessness we can allow demons to get control over different areas of our life. God stands by to teach us, and deliver us from our sin and folly, but it is we who have to want that victorious life. God is not going to hand it to us on a plate, but He wants us to long for it, ask for it, and seek for it by denying ourselves and following Jesus. That is how we can experience the deeper cleansing of sin in our life after receiving the forgiveness of our past sins. Many people make the mistake of thinking that God will do everything from His side. No, we do make our choice.

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