Blake Robert Templeton argues God deliberately allows trials and suffering, using Satan as a pawn to cleanse believers of double-mindedness. Hardship serves to purify faith and prepare people to receive God's blessings without losing them to spiritual corruption.
Satan is a pawn on the chessboard. So let me explain. God in his infinite wisdom has allowed a certain circumstance in your life that he could have prevented with his power. So the Omnipotent One, the All-Potent One, could have prevented this valley from happening in your life, but he didn't. Why? Because he allowed this pawn— he used this pawn on the chessboard to buffet you. So the Lord said, I have something great I want to give you, and he examines your heart and he says, Yeah, that heart, it's got double-mindedness. It's got brokenness in it. If I give him this treasure of myself, he will again give part of it over to the enemy when the enemy tempts him. So I'm going to send the pawn, the enemy, to buffet him where he's forced to cleanse all that out of him, where then he'll come back to me pure, and then I can give him the blessings, and then he won't give them back over to his allegiance to the slave lord.
