The Safest Place You Will Ever Find

Have you ever found yourself carrying something so precious, so important, that you couldn't stop thinking about it?

A child. A marriage. Your health. A dream God placed in your heart. An unanswered prayer you've been trusting Him to answer.

In today's inspiration, Dianna Hobbs shares an unexpected lesson the Holy Spirit taught her about trust, surrender, and the safety found in the name of Jesus. Through Proverbs 18:10, you'll be reminded that God is your refuge, your strong tower, and the safest place for everything you hold dear.

No matter what you're carrying today, God is inviting you to place it in His hands, trust His plan, and rest in His care.

Scriptures: Proverbs 18:10, Psalm 18:2, 1 Corinthians 10:4, Psalm 46:1, 1 Peter 5:7, Proverbs 3:5-6, Matthew 11:28

Transcript

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Welcome to Your Daily Cup of Inspiration Podcast with Deanna Hobbs, founder of Empowering Everyday Women Ministries, broadcasting live from our headquarter studios in Buffalo, New York. Visit us online at empoweringeverydaywomen.org. In today's inspiration, we'll be talking about the safest place you will ever find. I wonder, have you ever found yourself carrying something in your heart, in your spirit, so precious to you, so concerning, so important, that you could not stop thinking about it? Maybe you've been praying over a situation, stressing over an issue, trying to protect a vulnerable space, and even attempting to figure out how God will work it all out. If so, God sent me especially for you. The Holy Spirit has drawn you here today to remind you that the safest place, the best place for what matters most to you, is in His hands. Release it to the Lord, knowing He has a good plan for your life. Welcome to this, your Friday, June 5th, 2026 edition of Your Daily Cup of Inspiration podcast. My name is Deanna Hobbs, your bestie from Buffalo, your sister from another mister, your faith activator, bringing you the biggest smiles and the warmest greetings ever. What a beautiful, sunshiny day. It's about 76 degrees here in the Queen City, and I am feeling blessed and highly favored today. I'm excited that you have joined me. You could be anywhere, and I get to share a word with you here in the studio today. Every single podcast you hear is soaked in prayer and faith and is available as a free resource on select radio stations and wherever podcasts are heard, all because of your amazing support of Empowering Everyday Women Ministries, which allows our team to provide gospel teaching and humanitarian aid to those in need around the world. Thank you for your support, your generosity, your prayer, your consistency, your kingdom focus. We could not do this without you. I'm deeply grateful, I truly am. You know, something that stirred even more gratitude in my heart is a YouTube comment I came across under the previous podcast from a precious, longtime, faithful member of our Daily Cup family named LaShonda. And thank you to those, by the way, who comment and listen on YouTube also under my name, Deanna Hobbs. That's D-I-A-N-N-A H-O-B-B-S. There's a more intimate group of us there, and I just wanna share a portion, though, of what LaShonda said. She wrote Hey, bestie. You know I love it when you call me bestie. That's how you identify that you're in the family. LaShonda said, "Every time you stop by, I think you're stopping by just for me, and I know it's for many, but it's always a blessing to see you on this side. And whenever you come, it's always with a rhema word. This message is giving me life." Hmm. LaShonda said, "Today, I said, 'God, I know you're speaking. The lack of understanding is trying to disturb my spirit, but I'm going to be still, stay quiet, and remain ready to hear you.' This message ties directly into what I was experiencing just a few hours ago. It further confirms and reminds me that God sees me, hears me, and is mindful of me. Thank you for allowing God to use you. Your words were right on time." Oh, glory to the great name of our God. LaShonda, bestie, thank you for sharing that. It reminds me and all of us of the faithfulness of God and how he shows up with a word tailor-made for us right when we need it most. What an honor it is for me to be a vessel, so it fills my heart with praise and overwhelming gratitude. Which is why this is a great place to do one of my favorite things, take a moment for a praise break. And inspiring testimonies like this remind us that God is transforming lives through this ministry. We are grateful for your support that keeps these broadcasts available online as a free resource to help others grow in their faith. If you are being blessed and you believe in our mission to share the gospel, sow a seed of any size at empoweringeverydaywomen dot org slash donate. Thank you for your generosity. Hallelujah to the Lamb of God. Bless His name. Ooh, I'm just feeling blessed and excited simply to know Jesus. I don't know about you, but I'm ready to get into today's word. But first, a prayer. God, we thank You for the privilege of gathering together to hear a word from You. Thank You for your precious servant You sent here to press play. I ask that You word my mouth. Anoint these lips of clay that I may speak a word straight from Your heart that will transform the hearer and let them know beyond any doubt that You are with them, You are for them, and You are working behind the scenes in their favor even now. We bless You for what is already done. In Jesus' name. Amen. Hmm. I just feel the presence of the Lord today, and today's inspiration, once again, is entitled The Safest Place You Will Ever Find. And if you'd like to read along or revisit it later, you can find the written version on my official blog at yourdailycupofinspiration.com. So bestie, this devotion came from one of the most ordinary moments. Nothing dramatic happened, no thunderbolt from Heaven, just a simple spring afternoon when two familiar visitors came back to our yard. So a little backstory first. For a couple of years now, Canada geese have been showing up around our property, and I have grown to love watching them. Canada geese look like they got dressed for a formal event, but decided to live outside. They are beautiful with their brown bodies, black necks, and bright white cheek patches. They're hard to miss. And when they graze, bestie, they spend most of their time with their heads down, pulling at the grass. But the moment they become alert, those long black necks stretch straight up like periscopes, and suddenly they look bigger, taller, and far more intimidating. So my youngest son, Caleb, is responsible for my adoration of geese. He loves animals, and that love is contagious. It took me a minute to come around, though, I'm gonna be honest, because Canada geese are not exactly tidy neighbors. They leave droppings all over the grass, the sidewalk, and just about anywhere else they happen to wander. And at first, I found it annoying. But somewhere along the way, my heart softened and I knew I had crossed a line when I stopped complaining about the poop and bought a goose pooper scooper on Amazon Prime. Don't judge me. Yes, a goose pooper scooper. And once I made that purchase, I, I had to admit, I, I was invested. So bestie, I grew up on the east side of Buffalo, an inner city kid, and seeing wildlife was not really a thing, you know? The closest I got was a dog tied up outside or a trip to the zoo. But now our family lives in the suburbs with a creek running through the neighborhood, so Caleb sees deer near the yard and egrets down by the water. He's usually the first to notice when they show up, and he's often ready with his camera trying to capture their beauty in real time. So recently, bestie, when our adorable geese showed back up, Caleb recognized them instantly and squealed. Now, we had affectionately named them Howdy and Doody, and no, Doody was not named for the droppings, okay? Be mature. I'm the one who brought it up and said, "Be mature, all right? Let's get our minds together." So this time, though, Howdy and Doody were not alone. Bestie, bestie, bestie, behind them waddled a gosling, a little uncoordinated puffball of yellowish brown fuzz with oversized feet trying its best to keep up with its parents. Instantly, the whole family fell in love. My daughters, Kyla and Kaya, named the fuzzy little gosling Ryan after the actor Ryan Gosling. Apparently, this is gonna be a slightly corny day, okay? You better laugh. Give me a courtesy laugh. Laugh. We all burst out laughing, okay? I have to admit, that was pretty clever. But imagine our delight, bestie, when the trio kept coming back, wandering through the front yard and backyard, grazing on the grass like they owned the place. And I said to Caleb, "They must like us. There's no way they'd bring the baby with them if they didn't, right?" So naturally, I rushed off to do some research to confirm my suspicions and make sure I wasn't delusional and just flattering myself. And you know what? I wasn't. What I learned made those visits even more meaningful because Canada geese are fiercely protective. That's what I learned. They don't bring a gosling somewhere they perceive danger. Mm-mm. They only bring their babies where they have decided it is safe, and we were one of those places. That did something to me, bestie. Early on before we understood geese, though, Caleb and I got a little too close, and they let us know it. They hissed, honked, flapped their wings, stretched their necks, and started marching toward us with purpose. They got a mean streak. We gonna pray that evil spirit off the geese because they're beautiful, but they will attack you. So when that happened, we took off running. We ran into the house so fast, huffing and puffing and laughing hysterically. You better believe we learned that lesson quick. We were recording. I think it was Caleb recording on his phone 'cause we were so excited about the geese. Baby, the only thing you see is just the camera shaking and grass and us running and huffing and puffing. It was hilarious. But we really did learn our lesson, so from then on, we gave them space. We respected their boundaries and admired them from a distance, even though you at my house eating my grass where you don't pay no mortgage. I gotta respect your boundaries. They said, "No, this... Y'all decided to build houses on our land." I feel like I went off on a tangent. Let me come on back. So let me come back like the geese did. They kept coming back, and eventually they trusted us enough to bring Ryan, my grand-goose. Yes, congratulate me on the expansion of our family. That's the part I can't get past, though, really. Howdy and Doody had decided our yard was a place of safety, and, and I'm sure you can just feel my excitement. Pretend you care. I'm happy, all right? Be happy with me. Be happy. Doesn't the Bible say rejoice that, with them that rejoice? Be happy All right now. So, Howdy and Doody had decided our yard was a place of safety, a place where the thing most precious to them could be out in the open and still be secure. They didn't just find a place to eat. They brought what they were built to protect. And as I sat with that, I felt the Lord nudging my heart. Because if I'm honest, I saw myself in Howdy and Doody, and it's because every one of us has a gosling. Maybe it's a child, maybe it's a marriage, maybe it's your health, your finances, a dream God placed in your heart, or a season of healing you're trying desperately to protect. We all have something precious that we carry carefully. That's our gosling, something we watch over, something we deeply care about. And the geese challenged me, bestie, because they didn't spend their days anxiously hovering over Ryan. They brought him to a place they trusted, and that made me think, "Do I really trust God that way? Do I trust Him enough to bring Him the things I'm most protective of? Do I trust Him enough to place my children in His hands, my future in His hands, my unanswered prayers in His hands, and my deepest concerns in His hands?" And as I pondered those questions, the Lord brought Proverbs 18:10 to mind, which says, "The name of the Lord is a strong tower. The righteous run into it and are safe." Now, bestie, I have read that verse many times over the years. I've quoted it, prayed it, encouraged others with it. But sitting there thinking about Howdy, Doody, and little Ryan, I saw it differently. A strong tower is not just something you admire from a distance. It is a place you trust enough to bring what is precious to you. So when Solomon wrote those words, everyone knew exactly what a strong tower was. It was the watchtower built into the city wall, the highest and strongest point in the city. And when danger came, people did not run away from the tower. They ran toward it. It was built for the day trouble showed up. The righteous, Solomon reminds us, run there because they know protection is sure. But there's something else in the verse that captured my attention. Notice what Solomon does not say. He does not say, "The Lord is a strong tower." He says, "The name of the Lord is a strong tower." Solomon could have said, "God is a strong tower," and left it there, and he would have been right. I would have said, "Preach, Solomon. You in the book." You and the book, man of God, preach it. 'Cause he'd have been right. But instead, he put the emphasis on the name. Somebody say the name. In scripture, a name is never just a label. The Hebrew word, it's spelled S-H-E-M, and it's pronounced Shem And it carries the whole weight of a person, their character, authority, reputation, and their power because everything God is stands behind everything God does. That means when Solomon says the name is the tower, he's telling us something profound. The safety is in the name because the power is in the person behind it. Oh, bless His name. And this strong tower is not just any old slab of stone. David said, "The Lord is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer," in Psalm 18:2. And the Apostle Paul tells us plainly that rock was Christ in 1 Corinthians 10:4. So the strong tower has a name, and that name is Jesus. He is the rock that cannot be moved, the fortress that cannot be breached, and the refuge that cannot fail. When you call on His name, you are not hoping a hiding place appears. You are running into the one who has been your place of safety since before the foundation of the world. Oh, bless His name. The safe place is in the name. The refuge is in the name. Jesus is the name above every name. Knowing that brings me back to Howdy, Doody, and little Ryan. They did not just find a safe place, they trusted it enough. That's the key, to bring what was most precious to them, and that is what God is asking of us, bestie. Not simply to believe He is a strong tower, but to trust Him enough to bring our gosling, the very thing we most want to protect, inside. Many of us praise the tower from the outside while keeping our gosling clutched tightly to our chest, but God is inviting you to stop carrying it and place it in His care. Trust Him enough to cast your cares upon Him for He cares for you according to 1 Peter 5:7. Trust Him enough not to lean on your own understanding, but to acknowledge Him in all your ways, knowing that He will direct your paths according to Proverbs 3 and 5 through 1. Trust Him enough to call on His name in the time of trouble, confident that safety will be found in Him. The safest place you will ever find is the name of Jesus. To remind you of this truth, I'm stirring Psalm 46:1 as the sweetener in your cup which says, "God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble." As you drink down the contents of your cup, hear what the Lord is saying: Bring the thing you have been guarding to me. Friend, God sent Deanna Hobbs to tell you that he wants you to bring the burden that feels too heavy to carry. Bring the worry that keeps you up. Bring the situation you cannot fix. Then step back, stand still, and see the salvation of the Lord. Jesus said, and he's saying even now according to Matthew 11:28, "Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." Now let's pray. God, I pray for this my sister, this my brother. Thank you for reminding them that your name is a strong tower, and that they need only call on you and you'll be right there. Today, help them make the choice to surrender the things they have tried to manage in their own strength, and trust you with what matters most to them. Thank you for being our rock, our refuge, and our place of safety. And it is in the matchless name of Jesus we pray. Amen and amen. Your daily cup of inspiration has been brought to you by Empowering Everyday Women Ministries, where we fuel your faith every day. For more information, log on to yourdailycupofinspiration.com