#338 - Jamie Winship - Living Fearless

Jamie Winship: Find people that you want to be like. I need help finding successful people. 

Find people that you want to be like that person. 

The scarcity thing is like finding a successful person, and the best Marriage counsellor I ever met was the janitor in a church building on Tuesday nights mopping the floor. I would talk to him about marriage when I was newly married because that guy understood marriage, but he was a janitor. That's not his identity; that's his vocation.

Chris Powers: One of the great joys of my life has been building Fort Capital, something I have loved for a long time. One of the best parts about it is making it with our incredibly talented team across three offices, Fort Worth, Dallas, and Houston, and our team abroad. We've built an incredible enterprise focused on being the best real estate operator in the world.

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You can see job openings; I highly encourage you to check out our newsletter or follow us on LinkedIn. And you can do all of this by going to FortCapitalLP.com. Jamie, welcome to the show. Thank you for joining me today. 

Jamie Winship: Thanks for having me. I'm super happy to be here. 

Chris Powers: An excellent place to start would be about your exciting background and what brought you today.

Jamie Winship: Yeah, well, so I'm from, born and raised in Washington, D. C. and raised in a, my mom's pretty strict, independent Baptist, and she still is to this day. My dad is a wayward Catholic from Boston. And yeah, I grew up in a strict household, no movies, no rock music, that kind of thing. And so I snuck into a movie theatre in eighth grade to see why that was forbidden.

And the movie that was showing, I had no idea what the movie was; I didn't care. I just wanted to see what would happen. The movie was Serpico with Al Pacino—the life of Frank police officer Frank Serpico, New York City P.D. And so, 14 years old, very religious and watching the movie, it just affected me so profoundly, and I couldn't figure out really why, but I just started to cry. I knew it was something significant, something spiritual, but I didn't associate it with God or anything because I was in a place of sort of.

Where God doesn't go anyway, I walked forward in the movie theatre and proclaimed this to the projector guy at the movie's end. It was the only one left in there then. I was going to be a police officer, and that's what I would do with my life, so that was age 14. At age 23, I got through high School and university, met my wife, went straight into the Police Academy out of university, backed up in the D.C. Metro area and became a police officer. And it's what I always wanted to do. I loved it. I loved every minute of it. And I was good at it. There are things about it; when you get into it, like anybody starting anything, there are things you didn't know. You didn't realize some of your romantic notions get trampled.

Some of the reality hits you. But I loved it, and I wanted to be good at it. So my question was, you know, it was always like, who was the best, who made detective in the shortest amount of time, and I would try and find those guys and learn from them if they would talk to me and to try and be the best I could.

I also tried to determine what we could do differently at crime scenes and domestic disputes. That would make it so we didn't have to keep coming back, so I started developing different, you know, styles of handling cases and talking to people, and as a result of that, it drew the attention of some guys in the state department. So, they set up an interview at a bar one night in my fifth year in the department. I went to have this exciting discussion with this State Department official. He interviewed him and another guy. As a result of that interview, I left the police department, went into graduate school, and ended up working overseas, basically in the Islamic world, for the next 26 years, So 26-27 years. It's an incredible time.

Back in the U.S., I started a company called Identity Exchange, my history. 

Chris Powers: Okay. In a prior podcast or something you did, you mentioned that when I got to the interview at this bar, they asked you how you would handle this situation. You gave them an answer, and they hired you on the spot to the extent you could share.

What was the situation, and how did you say you would handle it? Do you remember?

Jamie Winship: Yeah, always remember this. So it was weird. When I got called home, a magistrate called me at home whom I knew I worked cases with and said, I want you to come too. I want you to meet somebody that wants to talk to you, and we're at this bar and clean.

And I said, yeah, really, it's like late at night. And he said, no, yeah, you want to come to this. So I went, but I had yet to learn what it was. It was odd for this guy to call me, but I knew and respected him. So I went, and so yeah, go to this table in the back of this bar and the way they were sitting.

One guy was directly in front of me, just staring at me. And the magistrate was over to my right, so I couldn't look at them both simultaneously. Oh my gosh, this is like an interview process. Like they're going to sit. So I have to keep turning my head back and forth. So, one guy is going to talk, and the other guy is just going to observe.

So I was like, wow, this is serious, and the guy just identified himself as an operations guy from the State Department. He had my folder of five years of casework in front of him, which was odd to me, and he was looking through the cases and saying I want to know your thinking process in the way you work cases?

Because I know you didn't learn this in a police academy. Whatever you're doing, nobody taught you in any training we know of. So, can you articulate your thinking process from A to Z, from the beginning to the closing or clearing of a case? And I said to him, you won't like my process.

And he said I don't care. I'm looking at the results of your process, and I want to know how you do it. And so he picked a case and just handed it to me. He said what did you do? How did you do this? And it was a case where, you know, it was a low-income housing project. There was a drug issue going on in there. We were in there all the time, and I decided that if we're going to end this thing, we need to get sort of the main person, not just lock them up because they'll fill in the position.

So, I found the sort of lead dealer, and I invited him to spend the night at my house. That was my process, and so then, the dealer agreed. He came and stayed at our house, and I just talked to him about his identity. And the guy, because of that interaction we had over those 24 hours or so, came back and disbanded the drug network because of how it affected him, the way that we interacted.

And the guy said, what did you talk about? Where did you learn how to do that? And I said I learned it from the gospels. And he said, yeah, wow. I wouldn't say I like that process, but he said it worked. And then he asked me a couple more, a couple more cases, one in particular that he emphasized.

And he said, can you do this overseas? Can you do this in an Islamic situation or a foreign situation? And I said, well, if they're human beings, I can. So he gave me a scenario they were currently working on, where they had lost an agent, and the agent had vanished. They didn't know what happened, but they couldn't stop.

They didn't want to stop the project. So they were trying to find someone they could drop in that would create a new paradigm on the fly. And so they were interviewing different people to see if you could do that. So he gave me the scenario and asked me what I would do. And so then I just took, I don't know, 15 seconds, and I prayed, or we would say, I knew I had to innovate on the spot so no human can innovate without contemplation first. So, it's not that you're an expert in innovation. It's that you're an expert in contemplation. I did a quick contemplation exercise using the scenario he gave. And I just had an idea.

An inspiration, a God thought, whatever you want to call it. And I said I would do this. I said I actually would change the whole paradigm that you're running because the paradigm is faulty. And I would, first of all, do it apart from the State Department. I would be completely separate from state department policy and do it independently. And this is what I would do. And he just wrote on a napkin. He said you're hired and wrote a salary on the napkin. He asked if this would get you from the police department. And he said, don't worry, your kids' education will be taken care of all, just all in this, you know, couple hours we were together. So I said, heck yeah. I'll take this job. For me, it was just the natural progression of where my identity and vocation would go if they were growing. So I said, yeah, and I went home and woke up my wife, who was enormously pregnant then, and I said. Guess what? We're moving to the Middle East.

My wife happens to be Jewish. So, it's not something she wanted to hear in the middle of the night. We're moving to work in the Islamic world, and she started crying. I said that's probably just the hormones, but she'll realize this magnitude tomorrow and be happy, which she wasn't the next day. So that's how I moved out of the police department, and it took Almost three and a half years to build a new paradigm and then go into the situation in a new way. 

Chris Powers: I want to talk about your time over there and building that, but an excellent place to start would be quoting you. You said every conversation starting point begins with identity. What is identity? And then I want to go into that as we think about what you did overseas. 

Jamie Winship: Yeah. It's interesting because so identity has become critical. It's everything that we do. So, the idea of all living systems is that the only organizing principle of any living system is identity, as no living system organizes around anything other than identity.

So, identity is the most critical part of any living system because being informed means doing things right. So, if the identity is correct, authentic, or original, the living system from a cell to a civilization is open. It's reciprocal; it can shift paradigms. It's interconnected to everything around it in its true authentic identity, like a cell. Still, when the cell is corrupted, and the identity is corrupted, the cell becomes a closed system and parasitic. It starts to devour things around it. It becomes cancer, so it's still a cell, but it's a wrong identity of the original blueprint, so in a human being, it's like it's your original design. It's the most accurate thing about you.

It's timeless, and it's grounded and affirmed, and this is important in Love. It's grounded and established in Love, and it moves according to Love in its truest sense, and so when I'm talking to a person, what I want to speak to is the truth and not the false or the invented. We can say a corrupted version of them that they've developed through trauma is what we want to talk to the authentic human being that was there as a child.

What was that identity? It's the most accurate thing about you. False identity, ego, shadow identity, or imposter identity is the true identity that's been traumatized, and coping mechanisms are developed to protect it. It is not bad, but then they cover up. They Disguise the true identity, so it's crucial that when you're interacting or thinking about something, you're doing it from the most genuine part of who you are because that part of you is other-focused. It's creative, and it's the prefrontal cortex.

The false identity is self-protective and self-promotional, and it's amygdala; it's fear-based. And it's because we've learned that you must protect yourself. You have to take care of yourself because nobody else will do it. So you turn inward, become a closed system, and don't know how to cooperate or reciprocate, especially if you perceive a threat.

And that's why we never have peace. So, we don't have peace internally, and we never have peace externally. Look at our world and culture; it's fear-based, self-focused, and self-promotional.

Chris Powers: All right, I will ask a dumb question. How do I know what my true identity is? How would I know if I've tapped into it?

Jamie Winship: Well, it's exciting in them, so when we were sent into the conflict zones of the world, you know, for our overseas career, the challenge was this to answer your question because it because this is has been a process for me in my own life and then can I train other people?

Does it work cross-culturally? For example, it should always work across cultures if it's human. It shouldn't shift because one guy's a Muslim, one guy's Hamas, and one guy's Israeli or Mossad or something like that. They're still human. And somehow, we've lost track of that; we call it they're dehumanized now.

They're just the guy of that group. And so when we were sent into conflict zones, the very first situation that we're going into is Islamic, and it's between countries. And so, our question for our little team was, what's the source of conflict in the world? Because if it's different in every conflict that we're in, if we're in Kosovo and we're, do we have to know the history of the Balkan conflicts?

And if we're working with the Uyghur Muslims up in China, do we have to understand Mao and the revolution, the culture revolution, because if that's what we have to understand to resolve a conflict, we're never going to, we may, we might determine one in our lifetime. Or they're all the same thing; it's one of those two.

So we went on the premise we're all human. It will probably be the exact cause, no matter where we are, if we can reduce it to that. So, we developed what we call a conflict map. And it's this. What's the cause of all external conflict in the world throughout history? Very simply, internal strife.

So, I'm in an external conflict because I'm already in an internal conflict. So, an internal conflict can't produce peace. It's incapable of making peace. All you have to do is watch a peace process between any two countries. Everybody comes in there in internal conflict. And as soon as it starts like this, it will go nowhere, and peace processes never go anywhere.

We've never had one. The closest we've ever seen of an actual peace process is in Rwanda, between the Tutsi and the Hutu, who just decided we will forgive everyone. Clear the slate and never talk about what happened again. That's the only one we've ever really seen work. The rest is detente. It's like we're too exhausted to fight anymore, we're broke, or one team just creamed another, but it didn't, so nothing got solved. Nothing got resolved, and it's just a matter of time before we're back into the conflict, so we knew it was an internal conflict. External conflict comes from internal conflict. Where's the internal conflict coming from in the humans? It's coming from fear. They're afraid, we're so scared. I was teaching a course right before I came here and was asking how many of you deal with fear regularly. Everyone raises their hand, everybody. We're all stressed out. We're worried about our jobs.

We're worried about the future. We're concerned about the economy. We're worried about China and all of this stuff. And we're just here all day long. You know, it's just pounded on top of us. Therefore, external conflict comes from internal conflict, which comes from fear. Where's what's generating the fear?

Well, fear in humans is very valuable because it protects us from things that hurt us, right? It's a warning system. Like if you keep driving this fast towards that barrier, you're going to die, and the fear comes up. As soon as you are correct, the fear goes away. You don't have to cope with anxiety. You must respond to what it's pointing to, and it goes away.

And so humans are only born with two or eight fears, the fear of falling and the fear of loud noises; every infant has those built-in fears of losing and loud noises. Every other fear you have beyond that is that you are taught to be afraid of things, and you were taught to be scared of losing a job.

You were taught to be afraid of being bankrupt. Those aren't things kids come up with. They learn it. And so the fear produces it. The fear is pointing to a wrong view of yourself. That's what it does. The fear is saying, man, you don't even know who you are. It's like you're doing this because you don't know who you are.

You think you need to be better. You think you're too stupid to be in this room with these people. And the fear is saying none of that's true, but we don't know how to address it because all we know is what we learn. It would help if you were better. I've been measured my whole life and every situation I've ever been in. I've been told I'm a failure, whatever it is. And so that negative thing is who's coming in to resolve a world problem, and it will never happen. So, what we have to do is not fix the problem. It's a shift into the truth of who you are and who's in this room with who is here, and they don't know.

So we have to have a process to help them discover. Okay, before we talk about, you know, the Middle East situation, let's talk about who you are. Like, let's talk about who that person across the table is because who you think they are is false. Who you perceive them to be is erroneous. So once we shift into the Authentic you, the fear in the room is removed. Once the fear is out of the room, the creative process can start otherwise in fear.

You're going to have to come up with something new. You're just going to try to protect yourself. And that's what happens. And so that was our thing is like, we have to know who we are, and I'll say this, I'll stop, we tell our people all the time, when you go into a situation, if you get your identity from the outcome of that situation, you're of no value in that situation.

When you go into a situation, you bring your true self, your true identity, into the problem, and when you leave, you take it with you out of it. If you try and get it there, or you can lose it there, you will self-protect and self-promote when you get in there, yielding creativity. So that's how we think about it.

Chris Powers: Okay, and to follow up. So, what is my true identity? What am I left with if my false is all the fears I tell myself? If I'm able to get rid of all those fears?

Jamie Winship: So the guy that trained me in this, I was overseas, and he was watching me in a conflict situation that we were working, and he pulled me out, and he said, you don't know your identity, do you?

I was like, so by the time that he said that to me, I'd been through the police department, you know. After five years of working on it, the State Department Graduate School interviewed me and developed this paradigm. Now I'm in a new situation. The first five years were rough.

I didn't have a good sense of who I was. The guy looks at me and says, You don't know who you are, do you? And I said, Yes, I do. I have been doing this for years now. He said, No, you don't. You're not even telling the truth when I say that to you. And I said, How do you know I don't know who I am?

He said because you're imitating other people. He said we don't need you to imitate other people. We need you to be who you are. So we know what to do with you but must find out who you are. It would help if you told us who you are; otherwise, we don't know. And so he sent me to this other guy who was the expert in identity.

And that guy just got me to walk through a simple process, which we've way more developed, but this was like a battlefield course. And he said, tell me what you believe about yourself that hurt you. Say them out loud. What are, and I'm like, what? He said, what are the things you believe? Try and tell the truth.

What are the things you believe about yourself that hurt you? And I said I'm better than the guy training me. He goes, yeah. Okay, where did you learn that? Who taught you that? Who told you that? Where did you know that you're not as good as others? Who told you that? And then I, and the more I said it, I don't think I'm as clever as them.

Who told you weren't as smart as other people? Where'd you learn that you weren't born thinking that who taught you that? And I just started, well, that teacher in second grade and my mom and my mom used to say, you're a disappointment to God and me like that. That's an identity statement, and I start to say it.

I am a disappointment, so I finally get to that, you know, pretty quick. I'm like, man, I feel like I'm a disappointment for a long time, and I just started to cry because it was so deep in me, and I never said it. I didn't even know how to think about it because I know how to cope, so I said I was disappointed.

He goes, okay, it's not true. He said you have to be able to give that away and get rid of that identity. Who do I give it to? He said do you believe in God? And I said, Yes. And he said, Give it to God. Give it to Him. He said God is Love. Let's out loud give it to God. Use your imagination. Picture God or Love or Jesus or whatever you do.

Picture them so he's moving me from my amygdala into the prefrontal cortex, where all dreaming and creativity occur. And I'm trapped. And I got to impress this guy, and he's got to like me, and I can't create. And so I imagine that I'm walking with Jesus somewhere. And he said, okay, all right, think what does I am a disappointment look like?

And I said, it feels like a backpack of rocks I'm carrying now that you're talking about, and it slows me down and everything. Give the backpack away. So, in my mind, I just visualized Einstein riding on a lightning bolt or Kepler visualizing planetary motion by watching a chandelier.

Humans only know how to think through metaphor, pictures and images to see the unseen truth. And so it was like a backpack of rocks, and I just handed it to Jesus, and he just threw it off of a cliff, and he's, and he looks at me, and he goes, you are my militant, peacekeeper. Could you run with me?

But you can't run dragging that backpack around. Don't pick it up again. It's just like that in my mind. Bam! It's just that image in my mind. I just wept, and I felt physically lighter. And then they put me back in, and I go back to the guy that trained me, McCollum, and I said, I'm a militant peacemaker. And he's like, okay, we know what to do with that.

It is where we will put you because now we know what you will do. You'll seek out conflict because you hate it, but seek it out to solve it. Then I started thinking about my whole life, which I've done since I was a little kid. And my entire life just lined up.

And then I knew why the movie about Serpico moved me. Because it was calling out my true identity, even in eighth grade, even younger; when we do this with kids, they know they have a sense of it. And so then, once you understand your identity, specific vocations are just the most significant thing you could ever do because your identity can run free there. Other vocations will destroy you because they counter the truth about your identity.

Chris Powers: We'll get to the Middle East in one second, but I want to clarify one more important thing in what you teach. Two worldviews are separation and connection. What are they? And why are they so crucial to how humans see the world?

Jamie Winship: Once we started working on identity with people who are identified as terrorists, they take on that identity.

They're called it from a young, and they start like, you know, I'm a blood, and I'm a Crip. They use those identities. They're not real identities, but they start to live them out. And so we started working on identity. It's super fascinating watching. He's mainly a young fighter. I realized somebody called me this when I was young and kept telling me this is who I am.

And I said, okay, and now I'm living this way. And I don't even really like it. I wouldn't like it, and I'm filled with rage and all this stuff. So, we started working on the identity. We watch the identity exchange. We call it so beautiful to watch because we're not doing it. We can't manufacture it.

And so when they make the shift, they will change their environment. They'll change everything once they realize, Oh, my gosh, this is who I am. And so then they make the ship. But then we noticed that it was hard for them to continue on them. So, like, they get it, they understand it, but something was, like, squashing it in them.

So we kept going back and thinking, what is it? We're missing a piece. And then we started to think. It's something about the world they're in, the world views they have that they're in, and the world view is the lens through which we see the world. It's not what we see; it's the lens through which we look.

That's why most of us have yet to learn our worldview. So we'll say I have a biblical worldview or a Quranic worldview or a conservative; those are what you're coming up with. Because of your worldview, they're not your worldview. The worldview is how you see the world itself, the lens. And so we started just researching it and reading.

I was reading economic theory because economics is a thing that runs a lot of stuff, and then economic theory. There's a theory called the theory of scarcity or wounded separation. The wound of separation, this one economist called it. It's not a new idea. It's an ancient idea. And I was like, man, that's what it is.

It's like an identity. Like you've got the correct identity of the fish you raised over here in the fish tank in a perfect environment, and then you drop them in a toxic pond, and even their identity can't protect them because of what's going through their gills 24-7 is poisoning them. And they need to learn what water is, right?

So you're breathing this air of culture, and the more we researched it, we could only find two worldviews. In religion, in economics, in anthropology, we kept. There's not 50, there's two. We make everything way too complicated. And the two worldviews. There's a separate worldview, and you can watch it.

And then there's an interconnected or connected worldview. The separation worldview believes in scarcity separation. Worldview sees the world as there's not enough of anything. That's the lens, not the lens, so I realize there's a limit in whatever situation I look at. It's limited, so I had better be confident about every move I make here because there's not enough money.

There needs to be more time. There's not enough Love. There needs to be more of my people. There's not enough of anything, So I've got to be sure that I don't make a mistake. So I have to be perfect, and it forces me to be focused as if I can't root for the other guy. There's not enough for both of us, so I've got to compete with the other guy in the most unhealthy way, and I'm, and so I can't trust them. And you learn it so young that wow, man, you're in a measurement race of limited resources and opportunity. You could be a better reader, so you're already in this, and you start to separate, and it fragments people into teams and groups that are at war with each other for a limited resource.

That's a separation worldview. It's the worldview of every empire that's ever been on the earth, and that's why every empire has failed every one of them. The alternative is the connection worldview, which strangely is the only one that coincides with the reality of nature. Nothing in nature believes in separation at all, ever, never. And nature doesn't believe in scarcity. Nature thinks that it's all interconnected, and the death of one is the value of the other, which, in humanity, you only see in someone like Jesus. Who's saying other focused, self-emptying, unconditional Love for your enemy is what works? We don't believe any of that.

It's like self-protection and self-promotion. We're the strongest. We're the biggest. We eat and devour everything around us to build a monopoly. That's the best. It creates nothing but war. The connection worldview is if I go up and you go up, why would we ever fight? You know, because there's enough.

So, instead of scarcity, you have enough. Instead of certainty, you live in mystery, the only thing not confident in this life. There is nothing we don't know; we don't have certainty about any science or anything. We know things, but it leads to more mystery, which we love, which humans love. We love mystery.

We hate formula uncertainty. It bores us. So, it's still being determined. It's a mystery. It's not perfectionism. It's fallibility; failure is learning. There's no other way to learn Except through failure to demonize failure. We make an identity. I am a failure. No, you're not a failure. You failed. It's not an identity. It's what happens when you try something to see whether it works. And so, in the connection worldview, the bottom line is other-focused. If he succeeds, I succeed. If he lives, I live. The separation worldview is Everyone's got to die so I can live. Yeah, so this separation system produces because it can't produce anything else; it produces human trafficking, it produces racism, it produces dehumanization because there's not enough for all of us, and I'm just going to take what I can get.

And we will honour and reward the ones that have taken the most. What kind of system is that? Over here on this system, everything from quantum physics to anything, looking out in my backyard, it's all working together. No daisy wants to be a rose, and no blue jay intends to be a cardinal because cardinals are prettier.

They all understand their identity as part of a living system centred on Love for one another. Which one works? The more we separate ourselves from creation and nature, the more it hurts our planet. It's killing our planet. And so, as the economists and ecologists say, if we just stopped international fishing for one year, take a one-year break, the Amazon would restore itself. But we can't take a break because there's not enough. And if we take a break, what if they don't? Then we lose so that nobody can take a break? And that's the world we find ourselves in, which we could change tomorrow. 

Chris Powers: And, now we're going to go down that thread. Much of what you described is bigger and better; we need more. If it's not us, then we need to take them out. And I love America as much as anything, but what you describe is how America takes a stance in the world. And now I want to bring it back to you going to the Middle East.

They had told you you had something different. They wanted you to work outside the state department and do it independently. You could share a story or two. About getting over there and the things that you were doing, because for listeners that have not read your book or do not know you, you were able to break up tons of terrorist groups and convert terrorists to Christians; your work is fantastic.

I mean, it truly is God's work. And so you could take it from there as I'm in the Middle East now. Now, what starts to take place?

Jamie Winship: Yeah. So, well, it's exciting, and I want to honour those men and women who taught me. So, I learned everything that I know, like everybody else, right?

So it's not like I came up with all this stuff. I was, and I recommend this to all your listeners. Someone said it to me a long time ago. Find people that you want to be like. I need help finding successful people. Find people that you want to be like that person. The scarcity thing is like finding a successful person, and the best marriage counsellor I ever met was the janitor in a church building on Tuesday nights mopping the floor.

I would talk to him about marriage when I was newly married because that guy understood marriage, but he was a janitor. That's not his identity. That's his vocation. We give people identity from vocation. It's a huge mistake. Anyway, so I've learned everything. Once you know it, you understand, take information or ideas, and mix them with your true identity, which makes them unique.

Otherwise, you're just a cover band for the rest of your life. You're just imitating some other famous whatever. And nobody likes a cover band. You want your voice, and that's why you need to know your own identity. And then you learn from everybody that you respect. And so I've learned a lot. And so when we got into the, really, the first scenario that we were working on, it was a pretty significant thing because it was one country, a Muslim country, trying to destabilize another one by sending agents into the other country. They sent 300 agents into this one region to destabilize it. So it's Muslim on Muslim. It's to be a non-Muslim and not Arab and come in with my team that was very, You know, white and foreign. The idea is that you'll never have an impact there.

You have to go in and either kill everybody or buy everybody. That's how the separation worldview empire works. It either threatens everybody or pays everybody. That's the only way it can work because it's a scarcity mentality, but in the connected worldview, it doesn't matter. What matters is I'm a human being, and they are.

And so if you go in with, okay, these are not animals, even though we call them that all the time, and they know it and act like it. The thing is, how do I connect with them? How do I like to make the connection? Because what's motivating them? Fear, they don't love Islam. They don't; it's all that is such nonsense.

They're afraid that they're going to lose. That's what they're scared. They're going to lose everything. They're going to lose jobs and freedom, just like I would be frightened. So when I go in there, I want to make a connection where they realize, wow, this person is here to take away my fear.

How is he going to do that with money? Money doesn't take it away, but is it fear? Arming ourselves that heightens the fear level on one side of the other. What takes away fear? Love, it is so funny when back in the early days when we were presenting this, you know, It's a hard-core people special ops type people.

We're going to go in and love them. They're like, oh my gosh, our question was back to those folks: Do you think you're winning? Do you think we're winning? With notches on our belt and all that stuff. Do you think we're winning? Look at the world. Our guys are going into scenarios.

We're not only not winning, we're shooting ourselves in the basement in Texas when we get back home. That is not anything to brag about. That is not badass. That's worthy of the evil. We couldn't kill it, and now it lives inside of me, and the way we're killing it is by shooting ourselves. Do you want to brag about that?

That's always my response to them: do you want to win this thing? It's not about beating people. It's about winning people. That's the shit. It's not about law enforcement; It's about serving and protecting. That's what's on our car serve and protect. We're not doing that. We're just Enforcing the law, which creates conflict.

So when we went in there in the first incident, we worked, and there were three of us and 300 of them. They were highly financed. We came in the part of the paradigm we invented. We came in hired by the bad guys. That was one of our intelligent moves; let's come as something other than the foreign guys coming in with our foreign policy.

You've already got a war. Let's get hired by the bad guys and have them put us in there, which took a while to work out. But once we did that, it threw off the opposition. They didn't know what to do. They're like, wow, who brought you guys in here? You guys brought us in here. Muslims brought us in here.

That affected them. Because then they couldn't just separate from us. Then they're like, oh. So then we start working in there. So we knew we had removed one threat to our being there by who put us there. So when they kept investigating who was our, who are we answering to, they would keep coming back to Muslims.

And it messed them up. I love how that whole strategy worked out. But down in the thing, one guy was their lead in the country, and we knew he was the one we had to connect with. And so I was; I taught in a 98 per cent Islamic university, so I had to get imaginative in the Quran and all that stuff to speak the language.

That is how they saw the world, right? Because their worldview is not Quranic, it's a separate worldview. So, I'm using the Quran to teach connection and worldview to the grad students. And he's one of the students, this guy, and he's running the militant group being recruited inside the university.

And so one day in the class. The only way I will get this guy to switch is to get him in a position. It sounds funny to you, but when I talk about this, I need to have it; I need to be in a position where I need to forgive him because the person who's in the position to forgive is the one who will win. You think you'll win if you come in in the power position. You're not going to win; there's going to run into the other side's power. But if you come in a position Where you end up with the power to forgive because they've done something to you, you now own the room, which is true in negotiating, too.

The best negotiating couple out there is a husband and wife who do the negotiations called HEAR. Honour, Empathize, Autonomy, and Reflection. And she, the wife, they're British, she talks about when they go T Rex, you go precisely right mouse. If you, they go T-Rex and you go T-Rex or you, you've lost, you're going to lose every time they go.

T-Rex, you go, mouse. You have the advantage. That's what you want. So I knew that back in those days. And so this kid, this student in my class, he stands, and he would interrupt me when I was talking all this stuff that he would never do to a Muslim. But he figured since I was not a Muslim, he could do whatever he wanted, and it was his country, you know?

And these are his, his boys, and I'm the foreigner. So he would do that, and I would keep teaching him. One day, he stands up in the class and asks, do you believe in Jesus to me? And I said I do. And he said, do you think that God sent Jesus? I do. Yes, I do. We never hide what we believe we're, not undercover like that. That's a time. And he said, why do you think God sent Jesus? And I said, why do you believe he sent Jesus? Because the Quran says, Jesus was sent by God. Why do you think he said Well, I think you want me to say because he loves us and sinful, and he loves us. And Jesus is the demonstration of God's Love for us.

Isn't that right? Isn't that the right thing? And he's going to preach it for me like he's going to do it, which would be, and so he gets pretty accurately talking about, you know, atonement theology. And I said, yeah, that's true. And he said, so God, you think God loves me?

Is that what you're saying? I said, yes, he does. And he goes, here's what I think of God's Love. And he spits in my face in front of the whole class. When he did that, two of the students jumped up to kill him because they were going to defend my honour as a professor. And no, I pushed them away the two. I mean, I'm like, I can do that. I can do that by myself. I can kill this guy by myself. I don't need you, but I have the advantage now. That was all I needed. There it was right there. And so. So I told him to sit down, and the students were horrified because I had been publicly shamed. They were Horrified and were like you better do something right now, or we cannot bear your shame with you. I just walked out of the room, which was hard.

It was so hard for me to do it because I knew what those students thought. I knew what I was capable of doing to the guy. And I wanted to, and no one would have questioned me. That would have been the thing to do. Some students later told me we could no longer talk to you because you had been dishonoured and had not restored your honour, and we couldn't.

So it was tough. It was hard. And so I was like, stay connected to this guy, don't separate from him, he's forcing the separation, don't do it. And so, it took everything I had thinking about Jesus and the greater mission. It isn't about my reputation; that's scarcity. It is about the whole thing.

We all need to win on this one. One of our guys had already broken into his house and stabbed him multiple times in front of his little kid, who didn't speak again till he was nine years old. He was already gone. That was one of my teammates. The other one's wife had a nervous breakdown. We were the only ones left, so I would go in and try to teach, but no one would listen to me. It was like, gosh, this is awful.

And then one night, I'm at my house, and there's a knock at the door, and it's him. The guy spit in my face, and I wonder, what do you want? And then I, you know, immediately I'm like, gosh, he's alone, and it's my time. I could just kill him right now, and he said, can I come in and talk to you? And I'm like, so people would say, he's not worthy of your trust.

Like you shouldn't trust him, I'm like, that's right. He's not because he's afraid he's wounded. He lives in a separate world, but he's doing what he knows how to do to cope with the world that he's in. I'm a threat to him. The U.S. is a threat to him. He's doing what he was taught to do.

And so it's not, do I trust him? It's do I trust God? That's the question. Do I trust God? And how do I know to trust God? Not because I have great trust but because I've seen God do things like this when I was a cop on a smaller scale. It has a lot of more enormous stakes, but I've watched him do it in the small.

Here, we are in a more significant state. So I let the guy in. He tells me, Hey, I just got nominated for a scholarship in Singapore because he's an outstanding student. He was, and I said congratulations. And he said, but I can't afford to get to Singapore to take it. And I said, well, you're asking me, and he said, well, I can't afford. I said, then you asked me a question, ask me. And he wouldn't, and I said, what about your Muslim brotherhood? Where are those guys? Why aren't they forking up the money? Do you know why they wouldn't give him money? Separation worldview because he's a competitor to him. So, it fractured his group, and every group burst.

And so I said, ask me, and he said, would you pay my way? He said, Singapore. And I said I would not. The Jesus that you spit on when you spit on me, he would. And because that's who I answer to and not you, I cancel the debt that you owe me for doing that. That's called forgiveness. I cancel the debt.

Well, when you say that to a Muslim, that's the most remarkable thing they've ever heard. It's like you're cancelling the debt. How are you restoring your honour by balancing your debt? And I went, gave him the money, and said, I will never take this money back from you. It is a gift, not from me, from the one you spit on.

I gave it to him, and he immediately disbanded the group the next day. He also told the group that he was inciting. He said if we're ever going to win and be free, we must do it through forgiveness. And I've never known what forgiveness is until last night. And he told them what he did, which restored my honour a thousand times in the university, more than if I would have killed him.

Right from that, I learned that when you're in a position to forgive, you own the room. Forgiveness is not a weak position. It is the power position. The mistake the scarcity world separation worldview makes is when someone offends you, you blow the hell out of them. That's the mistake.

Then you lose, you lost. We had a chance, but we blew it. So that was the big that was early on in my career. As we went into situations, we could work on those situations much faster.

Chris Powers: How did you get hired by them? You said you need to have the enemy hire you.

Jamie Winship: I learned that from the Old Testament. I knew that from watching Moses. Moses got Egypt to finance. First, they trained him to be a world-class soldier and statesman, and then he brought him to finance the departure, and I'm like, why aren't we doing this? I went to the government of the country we were trying to work in, And I knew what they were looking for in credentials for professors. I trained under this linguist and knew if I got her to teach me, I could go anywhere in the world on her reputation.

So I had to go interview with her. It was another person who just absolutely changed my life with her understanding of linguistics, so I trained with her for two years, and she would say to me she was Irish. I think she's passed away now. I would come in with stuff I'd written, and she would read it, and she'd go, we already know this; write something that I don't know; stop bringing me stuff.

I already know. I haven't. That was hard. The teacher was saying you should be creative. And so she knew where I was going in the world to work, and she was saying, use your faith and your understanding of linguistics and phonetics. Use it for the kingdom. But you're just imitating people when you write.

You're imitating Krashen. You're imitating Chomsky. Same lesson, right? And then when I went to the government of any country, I did it many times. I'm like, here's my credentials. I would love to teach and do field and language research at this location.

While there, I'm happy to offer my professional skills however you want. And they would always say yes. 

Chris Powers: Maybe the ordinary citizen like me, when I think of terrorists, I think of maybe the propaganda I watch on T.V., somebody with a gun going through the streets. But what you have laid out is.

You were teaching terrorists in university like they were everyday citizens, and they weren't necessarily walking around with bombs strapped to them and guns; what is the mentality of terrorism over there? Like, what is driving it? Is it the identity that this is my blood? It is my Crips.

Or is something else fundamentally driving this, such as simply forgiving someone for spitting on you, which could make it go away like that? 

Jamie Winship: Yeah, we dehumanize everything. We dehumanize it, and when we dehumanize it, we complicate it. So, complexity models are beautiful. Their complex models are gorgeous.

You must know which part of the complexity model you're working in. Complicated things are complexity models that we're afraid of. And we make them difficult because we want to avoid solving them. We don't like it, so it's complicated, it's complex, but the leaf is intricate.

But we love a leaf. Complexity is nothing to fear, but you must know what part you're working on. And so every human being wants to belong. The first thing the infant does is to make eye contact with the one who is happy to see them. They will look for a connection somewhere when they don't have that.

Every human is trying to understand identity. Suppose the identity is not understood and discovered in a healthy environment. In that case, they'll find identity and belonging somewhere because they, whether they like it or not, are in a worldview of connection, and humans need connection. And so if they can't find it healthily, they'll find it negatively.

And they look for it as early as they can. And so you start seeing young people trying to find places of connection immediately. And so they join gangs. You can; the gang can be the chess club. The gang can be the Christian club. The gang can be a fellowship of Christian athletes. The gang can be the blood.

The gang can be the gay community. The gangs are looking for belonging, validation, and Love. That's what they're looking for. And so they join gangs. And so, all our lives, we keep joining different gangs. All of us are doing it. I go to the Baptist gang on Wednesday nights, right? Or I'm in the atheist gang.

It's just gang names. They're not human names. And so they stopped being identified. Like, what's your identity? I am an evangelical Christian. What does that mean? That doesn't mean anything. It's like the name of the person who created that name, God. No, right, we did, and what's the name for to separate me from everybody else?

It's a name that separates me from everyone else and connects me with a few, and it is a disaster to have those names, and so when you get to an ISIS fighter or a Hamas or whatever, It's the Bloods and the Crips. It's no different than what we dealt with in Washington, DC. 

Chris Powers: Washington, DC, is a mess right now.

Jamie Winship: Well, our culture and worldview will keep producing that. 

Chris Powers: And is your answer, the simple answer that may solve the deep separation in America, around the word forgiveness? 

Jamie Winship: Yeah, a hundred per cent. And identity because the false identity can't be forgiven. It won't. 

Chris Powers: Why? Because of our pride and ego?

Jamie Winship: It has to have separation and keep validating itself as proper and correct. 

Chris Powers: And if you had a separation worldview that had plagued you your whole life, if fear overcame you in almost every situation, and I know you do much of this teaching, what would be the antidote?

How does somebody who's lived their whole life that way not shake it but change it? That's a big question.

Jamie Winship: No, it's not. It's pretty simple, but it's training. You must engage in it to change something like everything in our reality. You have to start, and you have to start small. You work every day in the process, and what happens is it's funny, like when you hear a Christian quote a verse. The gates of hell shall not prevail against it. What the gates of hell can't win against is the truth, so if I'm struggling with my weight, if I go to a gym every day with a trainer and do what they say every day, the gates of hell cannot stop me from getting healthy.

That's what that verse means. If I live in forgiveness, the gates of hell will not stop me from developing wholeness and resiliency. It won't because humans this because I'm operating in the blueprint of an actual human. So, here's the exercise for the group I was just with.

All negative emotion is an invitation to transformation, and all negative emotion is an invitation to transformation. It's a process that parents should be teaching to kids, but they won't. They teach them self-protection and self-promotion. I had negative emotions, so I was doing it with this group today. I don't even know them.

They came from all over the place. Here, I, the whole room, I asked them, Okay, I want you to say aloud what you're most afraid of in your life right now. What's producing anxiety in your life right now? Every human being in this room, I don't care what your background is, what you believe about God, any of that.

Please tell me what's producing fear in your life right now, one by one around the room. If there's a person in there who's not experiencing any fear, is beautiful, is healthy, or is a liar, you're one of the two, but you're not going to receive whatever. Still, everyone in the room, I'm afraid I'm a terrible parent or so scared for my kid. They'll say something like that, or I'm worried about my job.

Okay, how does it make you feel? When you think about your kid, how does it make you feel about your future in the job? They have to practice telling the truth. They don't know how to do it. They only know how to cope, deny, and not tell the truth. What are you terrified of? I'm worried that I was a bad parent.

Okay, what does that make an identity statement about me? Is it that I'm a failure? Boom, stop. That's what's killing you right there, okay? Now, when was the first time in your life you realized you were a failure? It didn't start with your kid. It was way before that. When was the first time you realized or were told that you're a failure and that? Brain the human brain knows what that was because the subconscious is not past, present, or future.

It's right now. So, I'm in second grade. I was given an example from my life. I was in second grade. It happened, and my mom said she was disappointed in me, which hurt me. And then she told me that God was disappointed in me. That pulled me when I was in second grade. And so I now have an identity. I am a disappointment.

Okay, every time something negative happens, it is verified and validated. And my mom says I was disappointed because I wouldn't say I liked attending the little children's Bible study. So now, every time I'm in Bible study, when I feel harmful for the rest of my life, it's because something's wrong with me.

Because you should like this, should I? Who said I should like this? We did, and you don't, so something's wrong with you, right? So guilt is I did something wrong, shame is there something wrong with me, and shame is challenging to get rid of, right? So you're just diving down in that from a negative motion in the current situation. The guy cut you off in traffic. Who cares?

How does that make you feel outraged? Is anger a secondary emotion? What are you angry about? I wasn't angry. What are you you're afraid of? What are you afraid of? He disrespected me. Oh, how does that make you feel? Like I'm invisible. Oh, when did you learn that in your life? Who told you you were invisible?

When did you start to realize you're invisible? You're not seen; you have to make yourself seen. That's what ruined you at that moment. Let's figure out the truth on that day when you learn that lie. What was the lie? You're unseen. That's not true. You're unworthy. You're a disappointment.

That is not true. But in second grade, I didn't know how to know differently. Now I know differently. So on that day, if you're from a Christian tradition like myself, it doesn't matter. But for me, it's like God was with you on that day when you were in second grade, and your mom said you were a disappointment.

Let's ask God what he said that day because you didn't know how to ask god what he said. You were told what he said. Let's ask him what he said right now, so I'm doing this with people in their 60s. Like I am, and man, you should see the emotion because the emotion's never gone away. It's never been dealt with.

It's just you drink over top of it, or you know, you become super religious, or you give up on religion. Whatever you do to cope, the emotion starts to come. What does Love say about you? What was Love saying on that day? Did Love say you were disappointed? No. What did Love say? Let's listen.

What did Love say? Get up here. What did Love say? Love was proud of me on that day. Why was Love proud of you on that? What does Love call you? You should see middle school kids do this in a public school. You should see them. We do whole classes of middle schoolers in this process with the guidance counsellor and the principal in the room to ensure that it saves the things you ask them for their names.

You believe in yourself, and that hurts you, man. They can name them so fast that's how well they already know all the false. What are they going to do with it? So we do this exercise: Let's give it to love, and they show they tear it up. They throw it in the trash. What does Love call you? Let's listen: what does Love call you, God or Jesus? They write down things like poets. They write down the most incredible things deep down here.

And when we did it with a terrorist guy, one of my favourites, he's a guy I work with now, he's been in prison in Israel and all that stuff the guy wrote, we were out in the desert, and the guy did this process, and he wrote down healer of the city. That's right, okay. So now, as a city healer, what do you get to do to be it?

What vocation is the healer of the city? It's got to work in real life. What is it? He said I've always been interested in public health. He's never gone to School. Now, he has a reason to go to School. Why do you make it to get an identity? To put his identity in that field and study, we went to his graduation, and it was so beautiful in this.

He graduated from the U.S. and was accepted to Stanford. It is a terrorist fighter who gets accepted to Stanford. He now works in Jerusalem with Israelis, his enemy in public health. That's how you stop the war. That's how you stop terrorism—that way, like that.

Chris Powers: I would be vulnerable for the business community and myself, and one of my biggest fears has been failure.

And it's driven a ton of my life. It's forced me to do good things. And it's caused me to do unintended bad things, meaning neglect. And is that from an early childhood that being told, if you fail, you're not good enough. And that just is replayed over and over and over.

Jamie Winship: Yeah, it's interesting. In the separation and scarcity worldview, the marketplace determines human value, which is deadly.

So, your value is what you can produce in a marketplace where the marketplace decides what you make. Right? It's not that you pay anything. You have to create what the marketplace says is valuable. What is the marketplace? Is that God? That's idolatry. That's idolatry in the worst sense of the word.

And so, kids, the reason empires fail is that in every empire from the ninth century to the modern U.S., the education system shifts from the study of knowing things and beautiful epistemology to how do we get high-paying jobs? When education moves away from knowing to just high-affluent jobs, the empire starts to fall apart because all the service professions start to become unimportant and all that matters.

And it's wild. You can read the ninth-century Assyrians right before they collapsed; they worshipped celebrities and athletes, and that's what they worship. Rome did it. Greece did it. They all end up worshipping celebrities, athletes, and people of service stature, which is unimportant. Teachers are unimportant. Police are unimportant. Those are low-paying jobs for people who need to be more successful. 

Chris Powers: I want to bring your story home; it's one of my favourites. You've been generous, but I can't let you go without telling the story. You hosted a men's retreat in Houston and brought, so that you can imagine, a bunch of Texans.

And you said I'm going to spice it up a little bit. I'm going to bring some terrorists or perceived terrorists from the Middle East, and we're going to put them all together for a weekend. Can you describe that story? 

Jamie Winship: Yeah. So I was; we were working in Israel then, commuting between Israel and Houston, working on some stuff.

And so the church I was going to is excellent. They said we would do a men's retreat and asked me if I would speak. And I said, I'll talk. I'm happy to chat. Can I bring some Palestinian bad guys with me? Now, when I say bad, like one of the guys I wanted to get with me had been in Israeli prisons 13 times.

Israel had already executed his brother, and the other one was in prison for life. These were mean, bitter people. He committed his life to fighting Israel. He was one of the people that I wanted to bring. He and four others. And so I said, can I get these guys to the retreat? And they said no because, in a separation worldview, no.

And I said, why not? Isn't this a men's retreat, or is it just a Christian men's retreat? That's different. And, you know, they were like, okay, all right, yeah, that was challenging tone. And so they prayed about it, and they said, okay. It is if you know you take all the responsibility for him.

Then I went to the Big MO in Houston, and I went to, and I said, Hey, we're making a men's retreat up at this church. We'd love for you to come. We've never been invited to a men's Christian men's retreat, not a Christian men's retreat. It's a men's retreat we're doing, getting together. A bunch of men happens to be hosted by this church.

We'd love to come, and they're, well, five Hamas guys, Pakistan. He goes, we wouldn't even invite them to our retreat. And I said, yeah, I know, that's the problem. He said, are they coming? I said, if I can work it out with the government, he said, if they come, we'll come. So go back, and it took all kinds of, you know, it's a long story, and I just did it because we weren't going to break any laws.

My question to God was, these men are not allowed to travel. They're not allowed to travel. They're not allowed to go anywhere. How do I get them out of Israel to the U.S. consular into the U.S.? Like, show me how to do it because we don't know a way. So, in the scarcity model, there's only one way to do everything.

And you're just trying to find the one way. In the connection model, there are a million ways to do everything. That's the beauty. We need to know the new way. And so I just kept asking. What's the strategy like in my intuitive mind? Then, you bring it down into the rational and work it out.

So, the intuitive is a dream. Einstein said the intuitive is the master and the rational is the servant, but we have made the servant the master. So the intuitive mind is like, let's dream about how to get these guys out of here over to there, but then it's got to work on Monday. That's the rationale: they're not against each other.

One dream and the other works it out. Brain left it anyway. So, with each guy, it just worked out. And the American counsellor guy said. He said I asked him if I could get these five guys into your office, will you give them visas to the U S, and he said, I will if you make sure they're back here in seven days, and if you lose one, you're going to jail.

And I said, okay, I'll take that. And the guy said you need help getting those people through Israel to here. But if you could, I'll give them the music. So, how do we get them from the West Bank to the counsellor through Israel? And we just prayed and prayed, and I met this Israeli colonel soldier, and we were talking, and, you know, they're just human beings.

We're all just human beings. And when you start talking about it, I told man, I would love to get these guys to a Christian retreat. And he thought that was the funniest thing he'd ever heard, the Israeli. He thought it was hilarious. He had all these stereotypes about Texans and then, and I said, yeah, but if I could get them to the Israeli consulate, I could get him, you know, legally to the U.S. And he said, I can, I can bring anyone for 24 hours into Israel that I want. And I said, would you get these five? And he said I'll give you. So I'll take charge of them for 24 hours. And he made it. So, it was like all of us, enemies, working together. Like that's the connected worldview because that soldier wanted to see what would happen because he's sick of fighting Palestinians.

He wants to see if there is a solution. Take him to the, we take them to the retreat. It was hilarious; the Muslims from the mosque came, they sat right in the front row, and five or 600 men showed up because they wanted to see what these guys looked like. And so we brought them into the retreat. They interviewed in the council.

It was hilarious. Bring those people to the retreat, and I wouldn't let them be together. So we put one guy in this dorm. We spread them all into the dorms and didn't tell the Texas guys who were coming to what dorm. And we just said, God, take care of, don't let anyone get in a fight. Just, we're going to trust you.

And so, but it was, the fear was intense. It was so interesting how fearful everybody was, and fear shuts down. You can't love what you fear. You cannot love what you fear. And so we did all the intro and stuff and everything. And so all the guys knew that these guys were there, the Palestinians were there.

And so the first night is packed in this. Like 10 thing they had up because so many people came and so I was I started talking and the Muslim guys were late as usual And so I'm talking and then they had police officers there police officers get kind of tense and then the guys come walking in when they came walking in I stopped for him to get in and they just stood in the back and they were very hesitant to come in when they saw the number of people and one guy Stands up and starts clapping one Texas guy stands up starts clapping like this and then boom they start popping up and clapping and that one guy was what did it he broke It's like he broke the spirit of fear in the room whoever the guy was and then they all stand up reluctantly or not and clap And then the most of them guys come in and they all kind of sit together and we start doing the thing do the first session that night So we do a session that was like Friday night Saturday morning we come in they all come in on time this time and when I'm talking, the dude that's been in prison 13 times has his name in a Mosque.

If you're talking in a Mosque and they disagree with you, they'll yell out. They yell at you. They'll jump up and scream at you. And so this guy stands up while I'm talking, and I, you know, he's in mosque protocol in his head, and I stop, and I say, yeah, what would you Hassan? What would you like to say?

Hassan? And he said, last night, Jesus came into my room, into the bunkhouse. And he said I want to say what happened. And I'm like, okay, oh my gosh, we should have seen the Christian guys. They were like, what? And he said he came into the bunkhouse. And he told me, and so throughout the time, several of them did this, would say these things, they had the dream, or Jesus met them or something like that.

What was surprising to the Muslims was that Jesus was in the bunkhouse with Christians. That surprised them because they thought each other didn't know God. And so the fact that they were all together and Jesus showed up with them all in the same place was astounding to everybody.

But the Christians were like, why is Jesus showing up to the Muslim guy? Why didn't Jesus show up to any of the Christian guys? That was funny. And so Hassan eventually, he says, Jesus, He was the second one to do it. Jesus has told me he's giving me a burden to carry.

What's the burden? The burden is that he wants me to stop fighting. He wants me to stop fighting. That is why we've got to stop fighting, and Jesus is asking me to go back and disband his group. Of fighters in the community in which he lived. One of the other guys stood up who ran the School, an Islamic school and said, Jesus came to me and told me that this is the kingdom of God.

Being in the room with you Christians is Malakut Allah, the kingdom of God. I would have never thought he goes, but it is true. I feel the kingdom when I'm with you. You're not my enemy. You're my brothers. People start clapping. So one of them stands up. He was the younger one.

He's pretty famous. He's on the Palestinian Olympic team. His dad's a favourite. Palestinians have an Olympic team, and he was one of their stars. He wanted to get baptized in front of everyone on YouTube. God asked, and we told him no, but he insisted. So we did it, man; that caused a massive uproar in Palestine when he did that.

So when we went back to Palestine, Hassan asked me if I would go with him to announce to his group that they were disbanding. And I said I don't want to go with you. Are you crazy? But he insisted, so we went to this location, an ancient Mosque that was like a secret place they met, and we went in there. He stands up in front of his lieutenants and says, you know, I've been with In the U.S., I've discovered that the Christians are not our enemies, they're our friends, at least some of them are very close friends, and we're not going to fight anymore. We're done fighting; Jesus has asked us to stop fighting, and we're not fighting anymore. Well, his guys started screaming at him, saying that I bewitched him and all this stuff, but then the other guys stood up and said, " We were there.

It is what's happened. So those people disbanded the group, and he became, they elected him the mayor of the city, so he didn't become less potent. He became more powerful. Then, the head of the School, Saeed, changed the name of the School to the Kingdom of God School. And in the Islamic prayers that the students have to do in the morning, he came out and said, we're going to pray a different way from now.

I will give all the students every day a question to ask God. You're going to ask God, and you're going to learn to hear his voice. And I want you to come to my office during the day and tell me what God is saying. And so he completely changed the focus of prayer, but not the form of it.

That's brilliant. That School went from being the lowest performing School in the West Bank to the We went to the awards ceremony where they were honoured as the highest performing School. Then, the E.U. started putting money into that School because of the students' level. The teacher began to discover their identity, not for me, from the Muslim leadership that came to Christ to reach for.

So all we're saying is, like, there is a way to beat terrorists, but terrorism is sourced in fear; take away the fear. There's no need for terror. Terror is just fear. 

Chris Powers: Jamie, thank you very much for today. It has been incredible.

Jamie Winship: Thank you for having. 

Chris Powers: I hope you've enjoyed this episode of the Fort Podcast.

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