The Human Search for a “Safe Place”

It's Either in Jesus - Or It’s Futile

6/4/2025

Lately I’ve been winning battles left and right

But even winners can get wounded in the fight

People say that I’m amazing

Strong beyond my years

But they don’t see inside of me

I’m hiding all the tears

They don’t know that I go running home when I fall down

They don’t know who picks me up when no one is around

I drop my sword and cry for just a while

‘Cause deep inside this armor

The warrior is a child

Unafraid because His armor is the best

But even soldiers need a quiet place to rest

People say that I’m amazing

Never face retreat

But they don’t see the enemies

That lay me at His feet

They don’t know that I go running home when I fall down

They don’t know who picks me up when no one is around

I drop my sword and cry for just a while

‘Cause deep inside this armor

The warrior is a child

They don’t know that I go running home when I fall down

They don’t know who picks me up when no one is around

I drop my sword and look up for a smile

‘Cause deep inside this armor

Deep inside this armor

Deep inside this armor

The Warrior is a Child

I remember so many times the song by Twila Paris made me cry. It was almost unexpected how it would well up and flood over from inside of me, unstoppable tears. Why?

The song is very generous about human foibles, and motives, and self-reflection. I’m thinking now, all these years later, nobody is that wise, certainly not in their younger years or maybe ever.

Just as on every other topic of life, we want to overtly or subtly make everything about “sin versus holiness.” Maybe it’s not really like that? Maybe it’s a more complex journey into Trust and Abandonment to God, whom we cannot see with our eyes or touch with our hands? Maybe...

It takes quite a long time and perhaps God’s intervention together with teamwork, the pillar and foundation of truth, Ekklesia (1 Timothy 3:15), to come to grips with what’s inside of us from birth: the lifetime search for “a safe place.”

Human Mammals Are Not Easy to Understand, or Easily Changed and Anointed

Why do humans obsess over pacifiers and blankies and plushies, even as babies? Before they can do a single thing on their own, they already seem to need predictability and something to touch, hug, or smell: a face, a voice, a warm bottle of milk. Babies need what the world system has labeled for mammals “a safe place.”

Children hiding in small places, imaginary friends when they are often alone, withdrawing into themselves in morose or fearful moods, reactions, or procrastinations.

Teens with hoodies pulled over their heads, headphones with music filling their brains nonstop, playing games on their phones or iPads, journaling, social media interaction, or other nonstop electronic “distractions.”

Holding hands sitting on the floor with other students in the Harvard Law Library bawling our eyes out together when a presidential election didn’t go as we thought it would, or having a campus sit-in or make a megaphone chanting “protest” when we don’t have the slightest idea what we are even talking about.

Adults hiding away from pain with vacations, nonstop business, religious rituals and ceremonies and hierarchies, hobbies and sports and television and movies and “the news”...

These are all the same pacifiers of our first days from the womb.

But, these pacifiers are not the real Solution to the PTSD of living and were never meant to be. They're an escape. They're a search for meaning. They are an attempt at a “safe place,” a place all humans have craved since the beginning of their tiny little lives.

Perhaps a name for someone who doesn’t crave a safe place is a sociopath? That doesn’t sound like a good alternative to me.

But what if all this desire for a safe place is a Bridge towards the Reality of HeavenLife Now? Then, if we don’t lay down the crutches, we will never learn to run. We’ll only think we’re really good on crutches and forget we were meant to run.

“The Full Measure of the Stature of Christ” Is His Only Acceptable Outcome!

I submit that if a “favorite blanket” and pacifier are not automatically sin to be repented of, then the whole journey into being “part takers of the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4), “filled with the Spirit” (Ephesians 5:18) is much more complicated and nearly undetectable for all of us mammals in our journey towards Zoe life, Life that is Truly Life, HIS Supernatural Life.

And the forgiveness of sins, “receiving our hundred percent on our test score as a free gift” as we willingly submit all, no take-backs, to God... that’s the beginning of unraveling our need for worldly mammal “safe places” that we didn’t even know we had been subject to for our lifetimes.

For adults, often the “safe place” distractions for the PTSD of living, frequent failing to fulfill their dreams, or the pressure of demands and expectations they fear they can’t meet... Netflix, rituals, hobbies, nature, ritual foods or comfort foods, a book and a blanket, weighted blankets when human touch and handholding is not available, music, travel, or sports. The temptation to boast or posture or talk about yourself or draw pity or cry or be outdoors. Special foods, glorying in supplements or health regimens or hair or skin or body shape or skills. Clothing, possessions, technology knowledge, who you know or have met or where you went to school, or language skills. Bitterness, judgment, slander, envy, man-made versions of religion, drugs, alcohol. Wanting, wanting, wanting friends, wanting noise, activity, plans, or quiet and solitude and no responsibilities or expectations, or getting ego boost and conscience salve from “ministry” and good deeds.... We could go on and on, couldn't we? But all of these are just “ways” to get the temporary dopamine dump—the “safe place” where we don’t have to deal HONESTLY with God or ourselves or others.

Mammals desperately seek “a safe place.” Mammals constantly “fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23) and the “full measure of the stature of Christ, anointing” (Ephesians 4:13) a.k.a. sin... Because they are looking for relief from this entropic, decaying world, and its painful and complex circumstances. If we can’t have the dopamine fix of so-called “success” in business, or relationships, or wealth, or family, or vacations, then we find another way to get a bottle of warm milk to suck on, or a highchair to bang on with our spoon.

If our lives are driven by these hiding places, these addictive “safe places,” then we rob ourselves of having God in the Way Jesus lives—“consumed with Father’s House” and “loving righteousness, hating wickedness.” We’re robbed of having Jesus’ Life because “life” is still about OUR experience and not His.

The Tree of Life Journey to Jesus

Just this morning, I was looking back on my life and realizing a little bit more about all of this. Sins, or not sins? Tragedies, or temporary failings?

Perhaps the acknowledgment of “sin,” the very recognition of our motives for doing this, or for running after that, or for falling into this, or for hiding in that... perhaps all that is not as black-and-white as we may want to judge ourselves or judge others.

The Tree of LIFE, Romans 8, will ALWAYS be the Journey to Jesus. The other Tree in the Garden, the Tree of judging and controlling truth and definitions of sin, Romans 7, will always kill.

For the sincere follower of God, they are all, we are all “hypocrites” judged on the XY axis, most of if not all of our lives, if we dig deep enough.

How was David “a man after God’s own heart”?! Maybe now we can begin to see that clearly in the context of the journey into finding God alone as our “safe place” and recognizing one by one, little by little, our own blindness to mammal insecurities, fears, and failures.

Is turning to a “safe place” of instincts that blindly, reflexively (almost without thought or planning) run past our common sense or self-control so easily—are these sin? Yes, of course. Sin is “falling short of the glory of God.”

But, is it possible to do something terrible like kill Uriah almost in a hypnotized state, almost unaware of how stupid and evil it is, until after it’s done? Was it absolute and utter rebellion on David’s part—or was it an almost-hypnotic state of stupidity, anesthetized by yet other sins of pride, self-pity, or fear, and then God’s awakening process that David could not take credit for as an awesome “obeyer” in order to be “a man after God’s own heart”?

Acts 13:22 says, “God testified concerning David: ‘I have found David son of Jesse a man after my own heart; he will do everything I want him to do.’”

But wait! How can it be both “sin” and “he will do everything I want him to do”? Perhaps in some amazing and “inexpressible” and “beyond understanding” way, God weaves the tapestry of “everything working together for the good for those who love him and are about His purposes” (Romans 8:28)... Perhaps God allows us to have moments of stupid instead of active intentional rebellion, in order to prove to us that “only God is good” and our best and our only credential is the blood of Jesus, no matter who we are. And so we can learn to judge by fruit, rather than “who are you to judge another man’s servant?”

Yikes! Weird. But so much like YHWH, the maker of Heaven and Earth. And there is no other explanation for how David could have been relentlessly called by God himself “A man after My own heart”—and David have continued on the throne and blessed infinitely by God after all of David’s falling short, aka sin.

God’s Masterpiece, Lest Any Man Boast

In Essence, we are all painting with our eyes closed and He is moving around the canvas to create His Masterpiece. “By Grace through FAITH, and that not of yourself, lest any man boast” (Ephesians 2:8-9).

The false safe places that get exposed and then shed—are not failed “paintings.” If our eyes are open and our heart is soft and our faith is in Him not ourselves, then our failures, our sins are Him working together with us to make the masterpiece, so that “when you are converted you will be able to strengthen your brothers and sisters” into the “full measure of the stature of Christ.”

But the journey is not “black and white” as the first and failing tree in the garden of Eden would have suggested to us. The Tree of Life is the complex journey of learning to wean ourselves off of our Binky of finding satisfaction in pain-killing, illicit drugs, or everyday mammal drugs of dopamine, serotonin, adrenaline, and oxytocin—the “cuddle hormone.” We all want so badly to ease the pain of living, or hide away and avoid the pain as we desperately seek “a safe place,” as all mammals do.

Life is complex. It's not black-and-white, on the X-Y axis. The Tree of Life is the Z axis, the Zoe axis. “You can’t get there from here.” God always designed our life-interface, our portal of access to living in this molecular, chemical existence, to humble us, and to teach us that arrogance, or defensiveness, or sports, or sex, or success, or fear, or judgment, or unforgiveness, or hiding away... will never fulfill our Needs.

We need to merge our life with God’s Life and not turn to temporary mammal satisfaction of our senses, rather than set on fire our Spirits—which are DESIGNED to be “more than conquerors” and Overcomers!

Turning Failures into Glory

What Adam and Eve did in the Garden, and what you have done and I have done, are sins, yes. And yet, we should understand that for a true seeker of God, a man or woman who is AFTER God’s heart, being an idiot is part of the journey, if we “catch the spikes satan is throwing at us” and pound them as nails into satan’s coffin. “And when you are on the other side of your idiot failure, no matter how bad or scandalous” did you strengthen your brothers and sisters? Did you, as Jesus said, use it against satan?

Weird things happen...

A battered spouse runs back to the one who battered, or runs away to something worse.

Lot turned to Sodom instead of to God.

King Asa turned to Syria instead of to God, “You relied on the king of Syria, and did not rely on the Lord your God... from now on you will have wars” (2 Chronicles 16:7-9). “For the eyes of the Lord range throughout the earth to strengthen those whose hearts are fully committed to him.” (2 Chronicles 16:9)

Israel turned to Saul “to have a king like the other nations” to give them comfort and predictability.

Israel turned to Egypt for military security instead of to God.

David, PERHAPS without even fully knowing it (Nathan SURPRISED David when he said “YOU are that man, my king”), turned to vices and what we later consider “obvious sin.” And of course, Job and everyone else had vices they did not even recognize as being vices. Until God took them into a deeper journey and they had new choices to make.

Sin? Falling short of the glory of God? Yes, all the way back to sucking our thumbs, the plushies and favorite blanky—we all have tried to find comfort somewhere other than God, ignorant that that’s what we are even doing.

The real question becomes: what did we learn from it and how will we turn failures into glory?... “Strengthening our brothers and sisters.”

Jesus said when our “faith fails not” if we happen to blow it, we can turn it on Satan and pound a nail in his coffin. “And when you are changed and as you grow up, strengthen your brothers! Strengthen your sisters! Use what you learned to have both compassion and tools to help everyone around you. Then your failure is not a loss but a victory for both you and your brothers and sisters” (Luke 22:32).

Walk in the Way of Honesty, Turning from the Thumb-Sucking, With Ever-Increasing Glory

We are so weird, all of us, no matter how well-intentioned. We can’t see what we can’t see, until we can. That’s the normal human state. It’s what we do next that matters, and not judgment of ourselves or others based on “a thing” that everyone does in their own way, hidden or known. But we can be honest, as the prodigal son— “Here’s who I am Abba, and here’s what I’ve done, and I’m not sure I even knew what I was doing or why.” This honesty is the way, walk ye in it, “unto the full measure and stature of Christ Jesus himself” experiencing and participating in his Sonship, with ever-increasing glory. The mystery withheld for ages and generations, now revealed to you, the anointed one and the anointing IN you—the hope of glory (Colossians 1:26-27).

The only real Forever-loser is “the prodigal” who blames the father or his brother or the past, anything or anyone else, rather than owning their own choices.

The idea of black-and-white “sin” is actually the wrong tree. Life is more complicated.

Ultimately, turning from thumb-sucking and Netflix and hiding and boasting, to turn to God as our all in all, our only safe place, is the journey into the Most Holy Place, into the family likeness of Jesus, into our destiny. But we can sure do a lot of stupid things and fall into accidental idiot moves as David did: looking for a safe place other than ABBA, during a time of war.

“For My people have committed two evils: They have forsaken Me, the fountain of living waters, and hewn themselves cisterns—broken cisterns that can hold no water.” (Jeremiah 2:13)

“God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.” (Psalms 46:1)

“The name of the Lord is a strong tower; the righteous run to it and are safe.” (Proverbs 18:10)

“He who dwells in the secret place of the Most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty. I will say of the Lord, ‘He is my refuge and my fortress; my God, in Him I will trust.’” (Psalms 91:1-2)

“The eternal God is your refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms.” (Deuteronomy 33:27)

“In returning and rest you shall be saved; in quietness and trust shall be your strength. But you would not.” (Isaiah 30:15)

“The Lord is good, a refuge in times of trouble. He cares for those who trust in Him.” (Nahum 1:7)

“Find rest, O my soul, in God alone; my hope comes from Him... He is my fortress, I will not be shaken.” (Psalms 62:5-6)

“Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest... you will find rest for your souls.” (Matthew 11:28-29)

By faith, when he grew up, Moses refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter, choosing rather to be ill-treated with the people of God than to enjoy sin’s fleeting pleasure. He regarded abuse suffered for Christ to be greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt, for his eyes were fixed on the reward. By faith he left Egypt without fearing the king’s anger, for he persevered as though he could see the one who is invisible. (Hebrews 11:24-27)

Abandonment—Gift Everything, and Tomorrow Give Him More

I should add that the religions of atheism, agnosticism, Buddhism, Islam, Hinduism, attendance-based liturgies and “services” and hierarchies... these are all human “safe place” alternatives to “the faith of Abraham” (Rom. 4:16)—abandonment to God and the future and the past.

Gift God everything.
And tomorrow, give Him more.

“With ever-increasing glory, glory to Glory, as we are beholding Him, we are transformed into the family likeness of Jesus, by the Lord who is the Spirit.” (2Corinthians 3:17-18)

And we know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose, because those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that his Son would be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters. (Romans 8:28-29)

Therefore I exhort you, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a sacrifice—alive, holy, and pleasing to God—which is your reasonable service. Do not be conformed to this present world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may test and approve what is the will of God—what is good and well-pleasing and perfect. (Romans 12:1-2)

It was not David’s perfect behavior that made him “a man after God‘s own heart.” And, it was not David’s perfect understanding of himself, or of God that made him “a man after God‘s own heart.”

It was his response to God, his passionate turning to God without reserve, and his repentance when the “Nathan’s of life” showed David the gap between him and God, his falling short of the glory of God—it was his unstoppable desire to make everything right with his ABBA… that made him a man after God‘s own heart.

Be THAT?

He came to set us free, make us “Free indeed”—nothing less. (Gal. 5:1, John 8:36)

Now this is eternal life—that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you sent. (John 17:3)

Pascal’s God-shaped Vacuum, full quote:

“What else does this craving, and this helplessness, proclaim but that there was once in man a true happiness, of which all that now remains is the empty print and trace? This he tries in vain to fill with everything around him... though none can help, since this infinite abyss can be filled only with an infinite and immutable object; in other words, by God himself.”

I constantly trust in the Lord; because He is at my right hand, I will not be shaken. So my heart rejoices and I am happy; my life is SAFE. You will not abandon me to Sheol; You will not allow your faithful follower to see the Pit. You lead me in the path of Life. I experience absolute joy in Your Presence; You always give me sheer delight. (Psalm 16:8-11)

Eden, where the Tree of Life is, means “delight.”

Where He is, no more pacifiers or comfort blankets are needed.

•  The Proof He Lives Is by What He Gives