MY REFUGE
Refuge–A safe place that provides shelter, protection, or comfort from danger, distress, trouble, or hardship.
Psalm 43:2
For you are God, my only place of refuge.
God, you are the safe place where I can hide.
I had literally just been thrown out of my fiancée’s parent’s home. There was no logical, rational reason, other than my faith in Christ, as I’d been very respectful and sat quietly for hours saying nothing antagonistic or offensive. We had just driven 10 hours to talk with them about getting married. After hurling accusations, then ridiculing and insulting me, they told me to go and escorted me to the front door, leaving my fiancée with a shattered heart, and all alone with the people who’d just terribly mistreated and threw out the man she loved. In a state of shock from what just happened, I drove my car through the dark streets of a town I’d never been in before, finally finding an old roadside motel where I could spend the night. I had never experienced anything like this in my life! Their words were daggers to my heart. My soul felt crushed. I felt completely alone, humiliated, heartbroken, and desperately wanted a safe place to be. Instead, I found myself in a strange town, in a strange old motel room, by myself on the most devastating night of my life. All I could think about was my fiancée, alone in the house of the parents who just broke her heart, berated her faith and mine, and threw out the man she loved. What should I do? How do I survive this? Will she survive this? I had absolutely no way of contacting her. I could barely think straight. My tears would not stop. The emotions were overwhelming.
Though I was in my own motel room, I knew it was midnight and the walls were thin, with people next door in the adjacent rooms.
I grabbed the pillow on my bed, grabbed my Bible, and went into the bathroom, shut the door, and wept into the pillow. For hours, I read over Psalms, sobbed and wept into that pillow, and talked to God, over and over again. This was the first time I’d ever really experienced God as my real refuge, my true safe place, my only place to run and hide.
That traumatic event was almost 50 years ago now, but what I experienced that night with God has been repeated countless times throughout the decades of my faith journey. It became a profound, defining moment in my life. God alone has been my refuge, my safe hiding place through all the hardships, persecutions, injustices, rejections, and betrayals of my adult life.
God has sheltered me. God has protected me. God has comforted me time after time. I’ve honestly looked back on so many experiences and wondered to myself, “How did I live through that? How am I still going on?” The answer, the only reason, is I never forgot the lesson of that night in that lonely motel room. God is my only refuge, my only safe place to hide, and he can and will bear me up. He will listen to my cries, comfort my broken heart, sustain my exhausted, beaten down soul, and sustain me with His miraculous strength. He will let me hide with Him. I am always truly safe with God.
God has been, and remains my real refuge in life. He will be the same for you, if you’ll shelter there.
Now reflect on this for a moment—If my story happened to most Christians you know in 2026, what do you honestly think most would do, as most people have a smartphone with them all the time and can immediately contact another human being? Call someone ASAP and talk for hours? Text furiously? Or turn off the phone and turn to God? I think the answer is probably self-evident. Are you determined to find refuge in God instead?
Psalm 46:1
God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.
Psalm 73:28
But as for me, drawing near to God is good for me; I have made the Lord my refuge.
Psalm 91:2
This I declare: He alone is my refuge, my place of safety; he is my God, and I am trusting Him.
I wrote this song as my declaration of the Refuge of God. I hope it ministers to your spirit.
Helping you become a Strong Disciple,
Because of Jesus,
Pastor Mark Darling
