Hellven: The Struggles of Being a Worldly Christian

By David Stanfield

Do you consider yourself a worldly Christian who struggles with sin on a daily basis? If the answer is yes, then know that you are not alone, that God still loves you, and that He wants to help you through your struggles.

In this book, you will hear from a man that grew up in the church as a preacher's kid and yet considers himself to

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trilogy Christian Publishing
• Release date: May 18, 2022
• ISBN: 9781685565909

David Stanfield

The fact is, if God wanted a goat to write this book, then it would, but God chose David Stanfield. David considers himself a normal guy that struggles every day with worldly things. David actually struggled with feeling qualified to write this book but learned that, sometimes, simply being willing to be obedient for something that God calls you for automatically qualifies you.

Book preview

Hellven-Cover-Final.jpg

Hellven: The Struggles of Being a Worldly Christian

Trilogy Christian Publishers A Wholly Owned Subsidiary of Trinity Broadcasting Network

2442 Michelle Drive Tustin, CA 92780

Copyright © 2022 by David Stanfield

Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.TM Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com. The NIV and New International Version are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.TM.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without written permission from the author. All rights reserved. Printed in the USA.

Rights Department, 2442 Michelle Drive, Tustin, CA 92780.

Trilogy Christian Publishing/TBN and colophon are trademarks of Trinity Broadcasting Network.

Cover design by: Trilogy Christian Publishing

For information about special discounts for bulk purchases, please contact Trilogy Christian Publishing.

Trilogy Disclaimer: The views and content expressed in this book are those of the author and may not necessarily reflect the views and doctrine of Trilogy Christian Publishing or the Trinity Broadcasting Network.

Manufactured in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

ISBN: 978-1-68556-589-3

E-ISBN: 978-1-68556-590-9

Dedication

I dedicate this book to my son, Donovan Stanfield, who lost his worldly fight on March 21, 2016. I love you and miss you every day, son.

Matthew 5:16 ;

Introduction

First of all, I want to introduce myself to you. I am just a normal guy, a son, a husband, and a father. I was raised as one of four children to a preacher, so needless to say, I grew up in the church. From as young as I can remember, I was always at church every time the doors were open. I was saved at the age of eight years old. As I have gotten older, I have always held close to the beliefs in which I was raised, but just like most people, I have always struggled with the things of this world. I am in no way perfect, and I struggle every day with all kinds of problems. I will talk about some of my own worldly struggles throughout this book, but I first want to talk about how this book came to be.

For some reason unknown to me, I am one of those people that does not very often remember dreams. If you ask me if I dream, I will typically say no because I just do not ever remember dreaming. On the rare occasions that I do dream, I typically dream weird things, such as inventing something, then wake up to jot down the ideas and sketch pictures of them. I have several really good ideas, but I have never done anything with them until one night. I had a dream, but I would say it was way more than a dream. In it, God spoke directly to me. He showed me in great detail the picture on the cover of this book, the format of this book, talked to me about topics for chapters of the book, and instructed me to write it. I immediately woke up, grabbed a pad and pen, and sketched out the cover as He showed me and wrote down some notes. Then I went back to sleep.

The next morning when I woke up, I thought to myself, Was that all a dream or what? I rolled over and found my notes and my sketch lying there. I then spoke to God and asked, Why in the world would you ask or even want me to write a book? I hate reading and writing and would rather have a root canal than read a book, much less write one. As a matter of fact, I have only read a book from front to back a couple of times in my whole life. In high school, I was the student who bought the cliffs notes just to pass a test over a literature assignment because I didn’t want to read the actual book. Even listening to audiobooks drives me crazy and doesn’t keep my attention. So why me? I asked. Over and over, I kept asking and throwing out all of these excuses to God. I never got an answer.

Some time passed. I had only told my wife about all of this. One day, as I was riding around with a friend of mine, for whatever reason, I told him about the experience. I didn’t get to the part where I told him that I didn’t know why God would ask me to write it. Before I could, my friend looked at me and said, David, this is awesome! Do you realize that God could tell anyone in this world to write that book, but He chose you! Do you understand that if He wanted a goat to write a book, He could make it happen? It was right then and there that I realized that God spoke through my friend to give me my answer.

So, you probably think this is the part where I tell you that I immediately sat down at the computer and started typing and working on this book. Well, it wasn’t. That conversation happened five years before I began to write, and it was probably several months before that when I had the dream where God spoke to me about this book. The thoughts of the book were always in the back of my mind, and the thoughts of being disobedient to God were always there with it. I just let the things of this world take place of what was more important, which we all struggle with daily because of the shape of fallen humanity in a sin-saturated world.

I actually started writing early in 2016 and got about twelve pages written when I just stopped again. Several months went by, and I constantly had convictions about it, but I ignored them yet again. On Sunday morning of November 13, 2016, I was about to walk out the door to go to church when all of a sudden, I got an instant message from that same old friend I mentioned earlier. I hadn’t actually seen him or even talked to him in about two years, and he could have no clue if I was or had begun working on this book. The message simply said, Write the book. It really hit me hard. I just thanked him for giving me the confirmation I needed, and he responded with, It’ll release the blessings you’ve been waiting for. Thank you for being faithful in giving me that message, Daniel.

So much has happened in my life that has brought me to this point of obedience and actually sitting here to write consistently, but God working through that friend was a blessing. I have gone through some good and some bad things over the past several years of ignoring this calling. I often find myself wondering if the bad was due to my disobedience and what things would be like if I had just done this when I was asked to. What I have to realize is that God never went anywhere. He has patiently waited on me. I am the one who ran from His calling and decided that I was not the person for this job. In this world today, He is the only constant and consistent thing there really is. We are the ones that keep running away from Him.

Well, here I am, Lord. I will do my best, and I pray You speak through me and that I get as much out of this writing experience as someone would by reading it. I don’t know if just a few close friends and family members will read this book or if You have plans for thousands of people to read it. Either way, I give You the glory for it, Lord, and will at least know I did what You asked of me.

In each chapter of this book, I will talk about some of the main struggles we live through daily. I will discuss real-life struggles that I have dealt with personally or things I have witnessed. We will dive into God’s Word on each topic to see what He says we can do when faced with these struggles. Most of these struggles can be found hundreds of times in the Bible, but I will give you several verses of Scripture that you can use to help you overcome each struggle.

I pray that you will open your heart to what God has to say to you through these pages, just as I open my heart to what He wants me to say to you. I also pray that after you read the book the first time, you will continue to come back to each topic as you encounter it during your days ahead and hold fast to the promises God gives us as we struggle. God never promised us an easy life, but He does offer help to get through it and to become more than our struggles.

What Is Hellven?

As Christians, we are taught that we are all sinners, and in order to receive God’s gift of eternal life with Him, we must repent of our sins, believe in Jesus Christ as Savior, ask Him to cleanse us and forgive us, and come into our lives and make us new. Once we do that, we are taught that we have punched our ticket to heaven, so to speak. That ticket is a one-way pass that can’t be taken away and never expires during our time here on earth. If we truly accept Christ as our Savior and fully take that experience seriously and understand it, then that so-called ticket will always be there for us when our time comes.

That brings us to the problem. We live in a sinful world that is full of lies and deceit. This world has gotten so corrupt and sin-filled that even Christians lose their focus on reality. We constantly fill our thoughts, hearts, and minds with things of this world that build up blinders to what really goes on around us. We have slipped so far away from the truth that we have created warped views and perceptions of the biblical beliefs that we once held close. Even some of our churches are teaching warped views of Jesus, leading congregations in the belief that Jesus is just fire insurance and not a life changer.

I believe God showed me the title of this book to help describe these warped views of how we live our lives these days. We think that just because we have been saved and have our ticket to heaven or our fire insurance, we can live our lives however we want with our remaining time here on earth without any repercussions. We think we can take a dip into sinful things and just ask for forgiveness afterward, and everything