The Exorcist Files - How to Live Without Fear with Jamie Winship
Episode Date: July 16, 2026How to Live Without Fear with Jamie Winship. In this conversation, Ryan and Jamie explore how the Lord has consistently provided everything Jamie needed, exactly when he needed it. In a world... flooded with anxiety and uncertainty, they remind us that true peace is found in leaning on God and trusting His provision, even when it looks different from what we expected.Thanks to our Sponsors for this EpisodeGo to TryMiracle.com/EXFILES to try Miracle Made sheets today. You’ll save over 40%, and when you use promo code EXFILES, you’ll get an extra 20% off plus a FREE 3-piece towel set.Magnesium, multiplied. 10 forms for total support. Go to https://qualialife.com/EXFILES to get 50% off and save an extra 15% with the code EXFILES.Let Rocket Money help you reach your financial goals faster. Rocketmoney.com/exfilesGet 25% Off Cowboy Colostrum with code EXFILES at https://www.cowboycolostrum.com/EXFILES.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
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Welcome back to The Exorcist Files, the presentation of the Spirit's demonstration of the beauty that is the Lord our God.
I'm your co-host, Ryan Bethay.
Today we welcome a man who loves to rejoice when he hears God's voice, bringing to us the God who brings solutions and who brings restitutions.
Jamie Winship is a law enforcement veteran and professional who dared to ask a simple question.
What would happen if I brought the Holy Spirit?
the source of wisdom and discernment into policing, reminding us that we have a right to remain
silent before the Lord, to hear his voice, and that we, in fact, if we cannot afford an attorney,
one has been provided for us in the heavenly realms with Jesus Christ. But in all seriousness now,
the windships have worked in some of those dangerous places on earth, including Iraq, Indonesia,
the Sahara, and even remote Tennessee. But for now, let me just say, welcome to the show,
a teacher, speaker, coach, founder of identity exchange with his wife Donna and a good friend,
Jamie Winship.
Welcome to The Exorcist Files.
Hey, thanks, Ryan.
Thanks for having me back.
It's good to see you again.
Good to be back.
Absolutely.
I know you've seen a lot of crazy things in this world, but did you ever think you'd be on a show
called The Exorcist Files?
That I never thought I would.
However, you know, I grew up in D.C.
And we used to go to where they filmed The Exorcist, the movie.
the famous stairs at the end of the movie where the priest, I think, falls down the stairs.
But that's weas together on Halloween all the time.
The tubular bells, right?
Do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do.
Exactly.
I know, which it's quite disappointing.
You learn that that's really only used, I think, in one part in the film, and it's like a brief stroll.
And it's, it kind of gets you because it's such a jam.
All right.
So I have normally an icebreaker that I do traditionally for everyone.
But because just to set the table, we are going to talk a lot of a lot of weird stuff.
This is the biggest non sequitur and has nothing probably to do with the rest of what we're going to talk about.
But I want to set the table because we do talk a lot about spiritual warfare and demons and all that dark stuff.
And the reality is we want to emphasize the light and the hope and the upbeat stuff.
And one of my favorite stories of yours is not one of the big ones.
This is like a deep cut from the Jamie Cannon here.
And I just love this one because it's wild and it's not normative and it's never happened to me.
I'm hoping. But we have a lot of people right now struggling, you know, financially, economically,
they're uncertain about what's going on. We live in a very unprecedented time. You have a story
about getting the best newspaper delivery ever. And I just love this because nowhere in any delivery
have I ever gotten this. And so could you just start us off on a hopeful note about the God
we serve and how you just never know what's going to be waiting on your doorstep?
Yeah. No, yeah. That's a really great story. My kids love.
that story because we were we I had left the police department and we were transitioning over to going
overseas and so and going in in grad school so we were like broke and um renting this house and and just yeah
really really praying all the time for provision while we made the transition from one vocation to
another and and so the rent was due it was $800 exactly I remember and and and
Donna wanted to go visit her parents for some reason or another, and the rent was due on Monday.
So I just said, well, yes, just go.
We'll just go and pray about that.
We go on the trip, come back home.
And our son, oldest son, goes up in the newspapers on the stoop, you know, that had been there, I guess, the weekend.
And so he picks it up and he takes it in the house and he throws it on the table in the kitchen.
And when he throws it on the table, these bills, you know, like a 20 and a 10, slide out from in the newspaper, which was odd.
And so I went over to it and I opened up the newspaper.
And every time I turn, you know, the page in the newspaper, there was, there were U.S. currency in between the pages.
In all denominations, it was, well, 20s and fives and tens and ones.
And it was $800.
It was the amount of money for the rent.
And so, yeah, I don't know, you know, I think about that a lot in I wonder like how that happens.
Because why would someone meticulously put dollar bills in between pages of a newspaper and then leave it out front of, you know, for the weekend?
I don't know how that happened, but it was, that was one of several times.
The Lord just decided to provide in these unusual ways.
There's a season in our life where he was doing that.
And then that season passed.
Yeah, and for context, too, right?
This was at the time when you guys had suffered enormous loss during the savings and loan crisis, right?
Yeah, that's right.
87.
Yep.
Black Sunday.
Yeah.
Lost everything.
Oh, man.
The thing I appreciate about that story is I've actually reflected on it since you told it to Abby
and I on Heaven Meets Earth is that it wasn't a million dollars.
It wasn't three months rent.
It wasn't six months.
It wasn't less than rent.
It was just enough.
to get by.
And I love that because I think that thematically ties to so much of your ministry.
And it's almost like he illustrated this in scripture.
But I just love it that my heart's desire is that he would fill my newspaper with so much,
so much 20s, so many 20s that I don't need him for basically the rest of my life.
And he's just, God's always like, no, you get enough to get this much mana today.
And I just love that.
He just provided for your needs.
And it sounds like this wasn't a regular occurrence.
It sounds like you went back to receiving your.
normal scheduled programming newspaper.
Yeah, right.
And then in that season in our life where I had, you know, we had left the police
department and decided to go to grad school.
And we had, we had, you know, as you referred to earlier, we had plenty of money.
I had, you know, my retirement and we sold a house and all of everything.
We had it all planned out.
And then the stock market crashed that year.
And if you could wait it out, it was, I guess you could survive it.
But we couldn't wait it out.
And we had to like cash in whatever was left.
which was not much. And so in that, and I just had said to the Lord, I'm going to go to full time to
grad school and I don't want to spend 10 years, you know, doing part-time. I want to go the whole
time. And I know you'd want me to go the whole time. So no matter what, I'm, I'm, so we didn't
have the money for tuition. We, we had zero going in. And that whole, that whole two years,
he just met us in every way. I never took out a loan. Never. I didn't work. I full-time went
to school. And he just took care of every bill.
It was so fascinating.
And it was like two years of Elijah laying by the spring, you know, just watching the crows and the provide.
And then the season ended.
And I got hired at the University of South Carolina and, you know, and then took the State Department stuff and went overseas.
And it was it was like that that season of life where he was teaching us how to depend on him fully.
And I remember there was a guy in school with us.
He was an NFL player.
and he had taken a year off for some reason, but he told me that he took a year off and wouldn't
take any money out of any account that he had. He wanted to see if he could live with his family
one year with only depending on God. He was such an interesting guy, and I feel like that's
what was happening to us. And that guy, when he got through the year, was so beautiful and powerful
to him, he didn't go back to the NFL. He didn't want to get back into this empire, so to speak.
He wanted to stay in a life of faith.
So I don't know if I would have done that myself, but we definitely need seasons where
we're just reminded, like, money's not the worry.
That's not what you have to focus on.
And I don't know how you stop focusing on it until you don't have it.
You know, so Jamie, maybe for anyone right now who's just, and this is the tension of
scripture, right?
The earliest Christians, and I want to get into this with you, like, you know, 11 of the 12
remaining disciples, you know, barring Judas is, you know, unfortunate.
and they all get martyred or, you know, I think exiled at best.
And like somehow this myth crept in that to follow Christ means health, wealth, house, and spouse.
And yet, scripture is very clear that God, Jesus taught us, that God does provide for us.
So for anyone right now, maybe in that season of just wondering, you know, how am I going to get by?
How am I going to pay the rent?
Obviously, this podcast comes with the ultimate disclaimer.
Results may vary with God.
But what would you say just based on your experience and as an encouragement to them?
Well, yeah, I mean, so it's interesting that there's such a good question, and I think it's really important for people to really get a firm, just get settled on this.
You know, here we are on the 250th celebration of our country and all that.
And I ask people all the time in relation to this question, if if we really, you know, repented and got on our faces before God and, you know, really turned from our wicked ways as Chronicle talks about it.
and he restored our land. And God just poured out all of his favor on us as a country as a people.
If every day he just poured out 100% of his favor on us every day, what would our lives and country look like?
Like, what would our life look like? What would my life look like if I walked in 100% of God's favor every day?
And I think, as you said earlier, and this is how people answer me, we would rule the world.
We would be the wealthiest country around. We would have the most powerful.
powerful military. That's how they imagine God's favor, is everything works for me. That would be
the evidence of his favor. And then I said, yeah, that's probably what most people think. However,
we have an example of Jesus who lived in 100% of God's favor every single day. He never stepped
outside of 100% of God's favor. What was his life like? Which is significant and a brutal ending.
Yeah. And so it's a wrong idea of, well, what does the favor of God look like? So I think it's important that we come to a place in our life where, and it's a journey, you can't just make yourself do this, but where I, and I feel like I'm actually at that place in all honesty, but where you can say like Paul, to live as Christ, to die is the gain. But to live as Christ, that means Christ.
is the paradigm for our life. Not a genie in a bottle to make things work. He's a paradigm for how we should
live and what our life should look like. And so I always wanted to be the kind of person that I think
like the disciples, as you said, were, you know, they were young. And when they started following Jesus,
they had visions of sitting on his right and left hand in power and authority, you know, all of that.
And competition among them and who's the best.
And Jesus kept telling them, you know, that's not, you know, I came to serve.
I didn't come to be served.
And so to, but they became men who weren't even afraid to die.
Like, that's how powerful they became.
It wasn't like, are we going to have enough money?
They were so far past that blessed or other persecuted for theirs is the kingdom to where,
I think one of this church fathers, Aranaeus, or one of them, you know, when he was going to be martyred,
he warned his disciples, don't interrupt.
this great glory that I'm going to go encounter.
Like, don't try and stop the martyrdom from happening.
So it's a whole mentality of whatever we do, we got to avoid, you know, we can't have
Christian persecution in the world.
We got to stop all.
It's really kind of a funny way that we've read scripture and come out with like God
never wants any of us to suffer or be tortured.
Oh, I know.
And yet there's the beautiful tension of scripture because with all that, though, he also
goes to painstaking lengths to say, hey, you know what?
don't worry about this because, you know, God feeds the sparrows and there's flowers that are closed.
And so, and he has provided in my life and in your life.
And obviously, as we get into your story today, he has met you at so many times.
And so we have to hold in tension this thing that he does want us to cry out and ask for help because maybe that's a line too, because I'm totally with you.
We have to recalibrate because I love it.
You say often that we don't take the Bible literally.
And I've thought about that because if we actually believe, and I've thought about it, if I actually believed the Bible,
then no cancer, no separation from a loved one, no death, nothing.
I would just be bored at worst.
I'd be like, oh, man, I can't wait to get to the party.
Like, it started up.
It's already going.
I just can't wait to get there.
It's like I have some chores to do in my house before I can leave, and you guys,
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You know, from someone who's walked to the Lord for so long and some of those dangerous places on earth,
et cetera, just maybe a word of encouragement to anyone right now who's just really nervous
and scared right now about I don't know how I'm going to make the rent.
Yeah.
So for me and for my family, it's always, it's God demonstrating that he's always with us.
I think that's the part that Paul is saying, to live as Christ, to die, is gain.
To live is to know Christ and know Christ in his humanity and fullness.
And then to die is just to be 100% there.
But in every situation we've been in, when we lived in Indonesia, the government would just embezzle our wires.
They would just take them.
We were on this little island and, you know, you could know where to go.
there's nowhere to go. There's no church to go to and say, hey, can I, can I borrow some money?
We would know the wire was sent from New York. We would go to the bank. We'd have the documentation
in our hand. And the bank's like, we don't know. It's gone. Sorry. There's no recourse. You can't do
anything. And so we would go months with no money at all in a foreign country. And it's like,
what do you do? And so the beautiful thing is, is that even when nobody needs,
knows what you're going through. And there's no way for anyone to send you money. That with your,
with your kids there, you can pray and say, God, we just need you to provide. Like, we don't. And it's,
it's not even that he provides. It's that he's with you. Like, just learning that he's with you all
the time. And he cares about you and he loves you. And he wants to provide for you enough, like you said.
And the, I mean, it was cool to see money in the newspaper, you know, that was cool.
But to be in a foreign country on a little island that's 98% Muslim and be, you know, one of the few expats that live there and be totally at zero money wise and watch God take care of you.
Our kids, it made our kids never worry about money their whole life because they grew up watching that.
And so it's a gift.
It's a gift.
It's not, it's not like, wow, can we grit this out?
It's like, it was funny.
It was funny.
I said to Donna, maybe we should fast.
She goes, we're fasting because we have to already.
We don't need to like institute.
Like, we already aren't eating.
You're like, there's nothing else to fast.
If anything, you qualify for the reverse fast, we will keep eating until the Lord provides, right?
Yeah.
But just the way he did it was so fascinating and amazing.
Were there any examples that you think that stood out to your kids that you said,
hey, teachable moment, son.
This is God showing up.
Well, one of them, I mean,
one, this just sounds so crazy and simplistic,
but like, you know, they wanted to,
we just walked down to the beach.
I mean, we lived on this island and just walking.
And they would say, you know, we're hungrier.
And just walking to the beach.
There's banana trees.
There's, there's, I mean, there's so much vegetation around you.
Like, they just, it was just like they felt like,
God, I mean, there's food everywhere. God just gives food all the times what he does on the planet.
You know, there's papaya. And so it was just like that. You just like there were no people in Indonesia who were starving to death just because of nature.
And so that was one thing that they really learned was to value that and value how God supplies in creation and on the planet.
And then there was times like there were like a guy, you know, I don't know, dirt poor people.
This reminds me of Elijah and the widow.
Who would, you know, I'd be like, we would be talking about something.
And I would say, they would say, you know, why don't you go buy a chicken or like from my friend?
And I'm like, you know, actually like we're the bank took all.
They all know what this means.
They all know what it means.
Like the bank just took all of our money.
And they're like, oh, yeah, we know.
And they would give you money.
These dirt poor people would go, let us do it.
Well, here, we've got five rupee.
We'll do it.
Like that kind of thing.
That's like Elijah going to the widow saying, you're not going to die.
Like, that's all you got.
And it gave, they told us later, it was like for them to be able to meet our needs as the Americans really honored them.
Wow, that's beautiful.
It was humbling to us, but God's like, why can't you receive from other people?
Why do you have to be the one?
Wow.
Was that for you as a man at all, I don't know where you were in.
the journey there. But obviously, as men, you know, painting with broad strokes, it can be very
humbling, you know, because also our peers judge us, I'm also curious, you know, I've had a
experience now that if so many of my friends have young kids and I see the different, you know,
offhander remarks about critiques on who's raising their kids the right way, I can only imagine
the commentary on the Winship household of taking children to live on bananas in an island in
Indonesia. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. From insane
to poor stewards of the children, God's given you, all kinds of steak.
From, you know, church people, yeah, that you, you know, you can't, shouldn't expose your kids to
that kind of danger and, you know, that kind of thing. Yeah, absolutely. It's funny because
this all comes back to the whole thing about, can you receive from God? Do you know how to
receive from God? And the thing about, like, I'm embarrassed because I'm not providing for my
kids is telling God, I don't want you to provide. I don't want you to provide. Or I only want you to
provide in the way that I tell you how to do it so I get the credit as a man for doing it.
Look, it's kind of arrogant, you know. It's like, why can't you receive? You know, the only way into
the kingdom is receiving. And we're all terrible at receiving from God. Right. We're just terrible at
receiving and letting him serve us. I tell the guys I work with all the time. If you don't let God
serve you, you can't serve anybody. This is what Jesus keeps telling them. The Gentiles' Lord
leadership over people. That's not what we do. We serve. I came to serve. I didn't come to be served.
I mean, it's such a incredible statement. When I say to people, why don't you just spend some time
asking the Lord how he wants to serve you. It's just, they just balk at that. Like, no, oh, you can't do that.
You can't. I said, you're not ordering him around like a servant. He, he wants to give to you.
He served you on the cross. That's what he's doing. He's serving you on the cross. And if you don't
receive that from him, you don't have anything. And so to let God serve you, like he says to the
Samaritan woman, if you drink from me from you will flow the rivers of living water.
Do you don't drink from me first?
If I don't serve you first, you're not going to go up into that town and do anything.
Let me serve you.
Well, it's funny.
If only there was a scripture for the two missions of Jesus.
One, the son of man came to not be served, but to serve.
And then another one to abolish the works of the devil.
So we got multiple objectives in Jesus' mission.
And Jamie, so you've done.
a tremendous amount of work with Muslims. And if I recall, too, you actually, your children married
into some, was it Arabic families as well? You have, yeah, you got a really beautiful, yeah,
beautiful global family. And I'm curious, you know, we're going to talk about spiritual warfare today.
And let me start with this. If I were to go over to any of the countries that you've, you know,
served and ministered, worked in, you know, with Jordan and Iraq and, you know, parts of the
Sahara and Indonesia, if I were to say, hey, I think I have a spiritual demon problem.
them in the West, they might say you're nuts.
What would be the reaction from some of your friends over there?
Oh, they would take you to a specialist right away.
Of course.
Of course, yes.
Yeah, they would be, oh, yeah, oh, immediately recognize that as a valid, important,
scary statement.
Even if I, even if we would do this sometimes if I was in a classroom full of, you know,
Muslims especially.
And I was trying to like get them to pay attention because they're all talking.
I would just say, hey, I had a dream about one of you.
night. That place would go silent because that stuff is so significant to them. Dreams, visions,
you know, all of it, potions, spells, amulets, gin, you know, genie, gin, all of it is so near to
them that as soon as you start talking about it, man, they're immediately interested in it and
take it very seriously.
Is that, so it's interesting because we hear so many stories of Jesus appearing
to people in the Middle East in dreams.
And do you think is that an example of God using like a pre-established lane that's
really significant?
You know, we're taught in the West to treat our dreams as very like, oh, psychological, whatever.
But obviously we have a couple stories we'll get into where this played a pretty impressive
role.
But yeah, do you think that's why God is speaking so much?
And did you experience any of that while you were out there?
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, yeah, I think that is why they're in such, you know, especially like in folk Islam
and things like that.
animism, yeah, they're so, it's so interwoven into how they think about the world in their
perspective. It's very, it's not, it, they're, they're interconnected so deeply, right?
And I remember when I worked at the one university in the States and we were interviewing
grad students, they would come into our university and we would train them so they would go
at Harvard or wherever. And I was talking to these Hindu students and they were graduate students
in economics. And it was so interesting.
I could be talking to them about economic theory and capitalism and all that.
And then all of a sudden go, and yeah, what role do you think the demons play in this?
And they would switch into it without hesitation.
It wasn't like, oh, I thought we were talking about economics.
Let's switch to talking about this.
It was like all interwoven and interconnected.
And they could shift on it without any kind of feeling like, well, these are mutually exclusive topics.
As soon as I talked about, well, what's the spiritual influence of, you know, of the evil
on economic, and they would just go right into it, whereas a Western student couldn't do,
wouldn't do it.
You know, they would be like, what are you talking about?
Like, why did you shift topics on me?
Because they're separate.
Yeah.
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So how did your time in all these other countries, especially in the Middle East,
how did that inform your view of spiritual warfare as a Christian contrasted with some of us
who were steeped in more Western, you know, naturalist tradition.
Well, I had a little bit of an advantage or whatever you want to call it, disadvantage,
being from the police department.
Like, we worked cases that were clearly something demonic, you know.
And so, and although the police officers may or may not talk about it when it was over,
a lot of times they wouldn't even talk about, they still saw it.
They still experienced it.
And so I had that perspective.
When I went overseas, it was just way more blatant.
It was just, it wasn't, it wasn't, it was just way more in your face.
So when we, you know, like got into Indonesia and, you know, just seeing things like, wow, that is really, it's almost like here the way the enemy works.
You know, I guess the screw tape letter talks about, you know, what ruins you is either an overinterest in the enemy or the ignoring the enemy.
completely. So over here, I think we just don't pay any attention to it or whatever. And it's
better for the enemy just to sort of stay silent because we'll kill ourselves. But over there,
it was like, I mean, they were so attuned to it that it was, you know, it's going from a,
it's going from a guilt and innocence culture to a power and fear culture. So in the guilt and
innocence culture, you know, we can talk about this. The strategy enemy is to make you
believe lies about yourself and God. In the power and fear culture of animism, it's all about
who has the most power. So does the pastor down the road have any power? Does the Paman Kool,
who's the Hindu magician? Do they have power? Does the, does the imam of the mosque? Who has the power
and how, and show it to us? Show it to us. And that's, so that when we would talk to the, you know, the
sorcerer, mystical type guys, they would always say to me, like, let's show us what you can do.
What can you do?
What power do you have?
What show us?
You know, we would be like giving these logical arguments.
They're like, we don't care.
We want to know who has the power here.
So how would you address that?
So when you got a power challenge, do you have any examples of, you know, where, you know,
your Christian faith ran into, you know, the overt demonstrations of the enemy and you kind of had
to rely on God to show up in that way?
Yeah.
And so we, there was a time, there's a lot of them.
And at first, you're hesitant because as a Westerner, you don't know.
I remember those sitting in graduate school when I was studying, taking a scripture,
Bible classes.
And there'd be guys there from China and India.
And they're talking about these power encounters all day.
You know, there's like normal part of their life.
Like they would, one of them said, hey, I was training a young guy.
And I told him, when you go to this place, bring the Bible because you're not going to be able to get in the door of the hut if you don't have your Bible.
And I'm like, what is that?
mean? And then they would go and this the pastor would walk in with a Bible and the other guy doesn't
have a Bible and he hits this barrier. And all of the guys from Asia going, oh yeah, yeah, oh yeah.
And the Western guys are like, I remember this one guy going, I don't believe anything you guys are
saying. I don't believe any of it. I think you're making all of this up because it just
in the Western mind doesn't make any sense or it's like it's not true. But so so when you get
overseas and there was like two two Hindu young girls lived in our house and one was a
had become a believer in the other one not yet and they woke they woke up they were screaming
one night and I got up you know and I went to across the house to where they had a room and they
were both standing outside the room and and the Christian girl was pretty calm she's a you know
from a Hindu family the Hindu girl was freaking out and I'm like what's the matter and they
pointed into their room and in their room they had these metal beds that they slept on you know
and the beds were like glowing red like a grill like the like the uh a grill turned on high and they
were smoke coming off the iron of their beds and the calendar and the wall was spinning like a fan
like that and the hindoo girl was pointing in there and you know she's talking about spirits and
evil spirits and and I and I like didn't know what to do honestly I was just like what in the world that
is so weird looking and the Christian girl went into the room and she put her hands on both she wouldn't
touch the calendar she put her hands on both sides of it and she just in the name of Jesus this needs
to stop right now stop and it just stopped and then she just went over the beds and like in the name of
Jesus this needs to stop right now we're not having it like that and it's just everything cooled
off and calmed down. So that was like pretty early on in our time in Indonesia. And that's when
we realized this is going to be a different thing here. It's going to be more in your face. And not
to be afraid of it. You know, not to be afraid of it. But it doesn't, it doesn't have power over you.
That's part of the discussion. Were people ever trying to curse you? And I imagine you must be the target of
all sorts of stuff.
And then how did you deal with that?
I also just curious as a parent.
Like, is this like, hey, kids, teach you a moment.
This is a witch doctor.
Don't worry, right?
We're on the winning team, you know.
Yeah.
Well, with our kids, it was interesting.
Again, it was not so much talking about it.
It was them just watching how we reacted to things.
So if they, we would have these things happen, they would just see that, wow, no one was
afraid.
Like this happened.
No one was afraid.
What should we?
then why would we be afraid? We saw what to do. And so that was a big part of them growing up
everywhere we lived, whether it was spiritual or people breaking into your house, you know,
and shooting your teammates like that level of like you could lay in bed every night,
terrified of all that stuff happening because they experienced all of that. But they just watched
how like, okay, those things happen. They're awful and they're bad. But it doesn't determine
and how we live. It doesn't, it doesn't change our view of the world. And that, so they learned more
than that than if I just said, hey, sometimes I would say to him like, did you know, did you see we
don't have to be afraid of that? Like when government collapsed in Indonesia and the rioting was going on
and houses were burning down in the city. And I, and I would say to him, look, look where the fires
aren't burning. Look where they are. Look where they aren't burning here. They're not here.
So though a thousand fall on one side and 10,000 fall on another, I will stand because you are with me.
It's like they learned that.
And they learned, okay, so if mobs come down the street, you go out that window, you go out.
And we just practiced it like a game so that they were always mentally just like, we know what to do.
You know, we're not afraid.
We don't have a spirit of fear.
So that was more of that kind of thing.
And for me, it was.
it was learning to not be afraid for my kids.
Yeah.
How do you think, I mean,
I guess to start,
do you think that I've often thought about this,
Senator Ben Sass wrote this awesome book called the Vanishing American Adult.
And in one part,
he talks about how our current generation has sort of been
inoculated against death.
Like we've been by a miracle.
We've cured so many terrible diseases that would have struck us at the
infancy level or time period.
And he said, you know, 50, 65 years ago, or maybe a little longer, you would know people in
your classroom at a young kid that would pass away.
Grandma and grandpa lived nearby.
They might even be buried out in the yard.
Like, death was just a normal part of life.
And so you didn't overreact to it.
And now we have kind of like Whole Foods, you know, health, you know, health maxing culture as
well, which I can succumb to sometimes.
And so do you think we're just inoculate against death?
And actually, you know, for all the criticism, it's like, your kid's got.
got a healthy dose of like, hey, this is how the world is for a lot of people.
And look, I don't want you to die.
I'm your father.
I love you.
Right.
But if you do, like, don't worry about it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
No, it's like they, they, you know, they're growing up in a world where, where like, you know,
when you live in Baghdad or Indonesia or wherever it was, when you go to bed at night, the city
gets bombed.
Like, it's going to get bombed.
The city's getting bombed every night.
We're the ones bombing it.
That was an issue.
thing in their mind, too, is like, who's bombing of the city? We are. Who killed the people on
the other block last night? Our team did. So not only were they like in the world of like death is
going to be all around us all the time, sometimes we're the ones doing it. And so how do you live
among people that your team is killing? Right. Which to me is interesting because it's like
Jesus going to eat with Zacchaeus, who's part of a, who's corrupt.
into a regime that's killing Jews.
Like they're, you know, he's sold himself out to that, to the team that's killing people.
And so when you walk around in a city where that you're, you know, again, one of the few
Americans living in a neighborhood in Iraq in Baghdad, and like the reality is it was
either us or the British or somebody that bombed your house last night, living in that
world, like, unfortunately, this is what the world is really like.
if you can go and live in a place where you can ignore all that, I guess that's good.
But then you're separating yourselves from reality.
And that's where the separation.
You can say, you know, we live in a peaceful.
Yeah, but are you bad?
But you've separated yourself from the world.
We're in the world.
We're not of it, but we're in it.
And God's not asking us to get out of it.
Right?
We're in it.
And so we, so, so, yeah, them just being able to experience.
People die. People die. People do horrible things to people. What do we do as believers in that world?
Do we go hide somewhere and try and survive it? No, that's Elijah and hiding the 50 prophets.
And Elijah's like, that's not, Obadiah is hiding the prophets to survive the regime.
It's like, yeah, but you're not doing anything. You're hiding and surviving. What does that do?
Elijah's like, let's go take it on. Like, let's go see if we can change.
of this thing. And so I think in the States, it was interesting, and this one, honestly, I think that's why
our kids don't live here. They don't live here. They don't live in the States. I don't think they
wanted their kids to grow up in that mentality of, we're going to be okay, even though the rest of the
world's not. It's like, you know, because that's a whole, that becomes a whole foreign policy
mentality. It's like, keep the war down the street, you know. So primarily, so when you're in Iraq,
and Jordan, were you teaching? Were you doing ministry? Remind me again, what was your main
mission while you're over there? So in Iraq, we, in Iraq, we worked for a state department,
recognized NGO. And part of all what we were doing was was redoing the curriculum of Baghdad
University. Wow. Because they didn't have any curriculum, really. Wow. What are some things
that on an ecumenical note, do you think like, so you've been on the ground in all these
different countries and you've taught, and I'm curious, you know, maybe both the church and just
culturally, what do we miss over here in the West kind of shielded from just the day-to-day
travesties that a lot of people are enduring in some of these places? Like, what do we need to
know about what's going on over there that maybe the media, maybe our experience and maybe just
our ignorance keeps us from knowing about these people who, and a lot of times are trapped in really
terrible situations. Yeah. Well, I mean, it's like one thing, one thing I think is really interesting is
so, for example, like in the West Bank and Gaza, you know, and I know all this is like sensitive to people,
but even if you're just saying, you know, as Christians, we don't want to see Christians. Christians
got slaughtered in Gaza. Churches got bombed. Christians got killed. Some by Hamas, not many, because they've,
they live in that population. But by, you know, by Israel and the war, Christians died.
Christians are imprisoned in Israeli prisons. And the president of Bethlehem Bible College has been
in Israeli prison four times. Nobody cares. And so it's always interesting, like, who are we
interested in? Who do we want to protect? So it's more political to us. So like, no one came to get him out of
prison. He's a Christian who was put in prison because of his faith. If he was put in prison in Iran,
we would have been going crazy. But he's in an Israeli prison. So I think Americans need to think,
like, are we duplicitous in this stuff? Are we on sides? Or are we, you know, again, this is like
more the, what does Jesus have to do with any of this stuff? And so that's one thing. The other is,
the other is in somewhere like Iran or, you know, where there's heavy persecution going on,
or even in Indonesia when we were there, the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.
It's like if you're on a crusade to stop persecution, you're actually working against a lot of what God's involved in.
Because you're trying to, we're doing like what we talked about with your kids.
You're just trying to make sure your kids live a painless life.
you know, the most successful, painless life possible.
But then that's not truthful.
It's not true.
You're painting a false view of the world,
which is a whole other kind of spiritual warfare, by the way,
because they're living inside of a false worldview.
And when you get in these other countries,
like in Iraq, when the Yazidi were being slaughtered,
nobody cared about the Yazidi being killed
because they were considered demon worshippers.
but when like my Christian group got killed in Iraq, then we rushed to help them.
And the Iraqis that, the Iraqi Christians who were killed by like ISIS or tortured by ISIS,
there's a really interesting documentary about them, those ones coming on and talking about
how much that persecution and suffering awoke them to the reality of Christ and how they were
grateful for the suffering that happened.
and we're always, you know, we're always like, we got to stop it, we got to end it.
All of those things are, all of those things were just, I think, so naive on.
And when we were in Indonesia, I remember there was an incident where these T. Marie's guys who are, you know, in Indonesia, you're a Christian because you're not a Muslim, basically.
Or, you know, they carry Kattepe.
They're called their ID card, religious cards, and there's only five religions and you can't be an atheist.
So you got to be one of the five, you know, Hindu, Muslim, Christian.
and Protestant and Catholic were the distinctions.
And so these Timorese guys who were,
T. Maris are, you know, not Muslim.
So they're Christian.
These two guys got drunk and went into this Muslim community and assaulted a girl.
And so the next day, the Muslim cousins went and found both guys and beheaded them
and put their heads on these pipes that you could, you drove by there that were.
And man, that came out as persecution of the Christian church by the Muslim.
nobody knew the real facts of that situation.
It was just like, but that went out as martyrdom and it's like, that is not martyrdom.
That is not what that is.
And so all of these issues, I think we just got to be really careful how we investigate and read and think of it.
But when you live in that world where it's a, it's a gray, mushy mix of who's doing what to who.
And when you just, so that's like it makes me sympathetic to events that happen anywhere.
like, yeah, but why did that happen? And what up in, and we lived in Jerusalem and behind,
we were in one of the only mixed neighborhoods in the whole country. There's not mixed
neighborhoods. We were in one of the only apartment complexes where a Muslim would come.
That wasn't a Muslim quarter place. And behind our house, the, in the marketplace,
one evening, three Arab young men were lynched in the marketplace. No prosecution.
no investigation, nothing in the newspapers.
Wow.
You know, and this guy, so our kids grew up watching, like, why isn't that reported?
Like, why doesn't, you know, where are the Christian, there's a bunch of Christian watchdog groups in Jerusalem.
Why didn't any of them see that?
So that kind of thing, you know?
Yeah.
It's interesting.
It's tough because, obviously, you know, we can vehemently disagree with another theology and recognize harmful,
what we believe to be harmful components and yet still value human.
human life. We had someone come on the show years ago. We got a lot of flack for it, actually.
He's a really brilliant Arab scholar, and he's a Christian, but God rescued him and told him,
I went to learn Arabic, and you're going to go preach the gospel in the Middle East. And
he said some of the show, which really stuck with me, and it's been years. And he said,
look, you know, yes, you can disagree with the theology, but just, you know, let's also acknowledge
that someone's, you know, that that's a mother and a father who lost their child.
they just also a lot of people just want to live ordinary lives and they're not trying to destroy you
and there's a weird tension there because on the reality and there are there is there is evil in the world
there is like there are also harmful ideologies but there's also a human element of like hey like
where's the empathy to like hey if someone i vehemently disagree with just like lost her child that's
like that's a horrible tragedy that probably you know it doesn't get talked about enough that's right and
And, you know, in all of our work, there's, I mean, even in the police department, you know,
when you're arresting like pretty nasty people or the work that we do with human traffickers,
there's, there, the majority of humans are in situations that they didn't create, they did, that
they didn't pick to be born into, you know, they didn't have a choice of where they were born
in what culture and all that.
And so when they're in those situations, they, the vast majority are like, tell us a way to get out.
Tell us a way to end this.
We'll do it.
We want to end this.
You know, it's like the conflict in Iran.
Like how many people in Iran just want that thing to be over?
I think the majority of Israelis want everything to be over with.
They do.
No one was cheering for the, it's funny, the Aya Toll, like, they were months earlier.
No one was like, they're like, we know, we don't want him either.
Right.
That's exactly right.
power what, 40 years? I mean, gosh, it's just, I mean, just, yeah, that's a great point.
People are born in these circumstances. Jamie, why do you have such a unique perspective,
you've been all over the world, you've ministered all these places. And yet, from every
objective metric from like economic, right? And that's not obviously the only metric to define
human flourishing and success. But why do you think the U.S. has just been so prosperous in many of
these, you know, indices, and there are so many places around the world that just remain stuck.
Is it just, hey, it's a virtue of like, look, geography, human history, weird events.
Like, it's just kind of the crazy, you know, luck of the draw that God is sovereignly loud.
Or do you think there's something inherent to the, like, spiritual dynamic?
And I'm probably dancing around this, because there is this idea, I think, that creeps in that, like, America, you know, and I'm a proud American.
And I love so much about this country and what it's aims to be, even if we fall short of
that sometimes.
Like, I love when Bono said, it's an amazing, it's not just a country, it's an idea.
But I've also like, yeah, you know what?
If I'm being honest, there's times I'm like, yeah, wow, maybe our success is prove
God's endorsement of our particular theological or the fact that we have Christian-friendly
principles, you know?
Yeah.
I think it's a fabulous question, especially in the 250-year celebration that we're
we're in. I think it's so, I mean, you could go historically back and go, why was Rome so great,
you know, and why were the Assyrians so powerful? And why was Persia so amazing? It wasn't,
we wouldn't say because they had the God idea. It's because they were super smart, very
strategic soldiers and empire builders. That's what they were. And they were great at it. And so on the
one hand, on the one hand, when you read like Sir John Glob's book on history or Toyin B's history,
they talk about the rise and fall of empires and they all follow the same track. I mean,
and the U.S. has done the exact same thing as every other empire. So, I mean, that's, that's,
they all go through the same process. But I'll tell you, here's what makes America great or what
did. I think, I don't think we've lost track of it. But what made America great, Madison talks about
this and Jefferson and Adams and these guys. And I've spoken on this a few times. So like we're in a
constitutional republic that's a liberal democracy. Like that's the idea. I love the Bono quote too.
It's such a good idea. The U.S. is such a good idea. But to keep a good, a great idea from turning
into an imperialistic empire is really hard. Because once you have power, oh, wow. That power,
you know, as Machiavelli said, power corrupts an absolute power absolutely corrupt.
And so that's the decline of empires is power.
Once they get the, when they're rising, they're very tolerant and we love people.
Once they get the power, the dissenters start to get eliminated.
We don't want you here anymore.
We needed you then.
We don't need you anymore.
That starts to happen.
And that's why all empires fail.
But here's what made the U.S. great.
And it's not Judeo-Christian ethic.
It's not that.
What it is is this.
The U.S. had three things in its founding that are only found in the scriptures. They're not found in the Quran or the Veda anywhere else. They're only found in the scriptures. And there were three principles on which you could build a very cohesive, strong, not powerful, but influential constitutional republic, liberal democracy. And it's these three things that are found nowhere else. Number one, no fear. So to have a country,
a people that are not ruled by fear. The rulers don't use fear. The people don't use fear. Fear is not
permitted to be a motivator for any part of what's done. And that's only found in Scripture.
Scriptures are the only place where you can read where the number one exhortation of God is,
Do not be afraid. That's a number one exhortation in Scripture, because God doesn't rule with fear.
He rules with love. That's different. That's different than any other.
view. So no fear. That's number one. Two, Jesus is the paradigm for the citizen. So the citizenry has to
have a paradigm to model in order to be ethical, great people. You know, Detofeel, America's great because
she's good. Based on what? Model. Jesus. Right? So Jesus, we have to decide, is Jesus the paradigm for
our lives, or is Jesus just a means to an end? If Jesus is just a means to an end, then we can use Jesus for
what we want and sideline him on everything else. That's when I say, do you take the Bible literally?
So no fear. Imagine a country. No fear. We're not afraid of the government. The government's not
afraid of us. We're not afraid of the other views that are different. We're not afraid of them.
We deal with them. No fear. Jesus is the paradigm for how everybody models their life.
You don't have to be a Christian, but he's the human, he's the paradigm that we have for the highest
way we could live. And third, forgiveness is the rule of the land. Forgiveness. Nowhere in the world
were those three principles put forward as the foundation of a country. And that's what, that's what,
that's what initially got the U.S. going was those ideas. We're leaving tyranny. We're coming to
this place to be free. Jesus is going to be the model for how we live our lives. And we will forgive.
So when you look at our country now, it's only fear. It's only fear that runs everything.
Jesus is definitely not the paradigm. I ask people all the time, show me the Jesus paradigm leader
that we're all looking to. Where is that person? Where is that person anywhere? And forgiveness,
gone, gone. It's all about retribution, revenge, who's in power? How do we punish people we don't like?
And so I love our country too.
I'm praying and a lot of what we do is like, how do we get rid of the fear?
How do we get rid of this fear that dominates us?
We're afraid of Iran.
We're afraid of China.
We're afraid of Muslims.
We're afraid of everybody.
And everyone's afraid of everyone else.
And so all we're doing is self-protecting and self-promoting.
And to do that, we have to go kill our enemies.
I mean, that's the only way we can really do it.
We have to get rid of the enemies.
And so Jesus has to step aside.
because he's like, I want you to love your enemies. I know, but we can't. It's like Constantine said,
I'll become a believer. I'll become a true believer when I know I'm going to die, and I'll be
baptized before I die. But before I die, I'm going to be the Roman emperor. And I can't have Jesus
run in the show, right? Because then we won't even, then we can't even go to war, really.
And so then forgiveness is just like, imagine what that would be like. So how do we teach forgiveness
again because our kids don't see it. Where do they see forgiveness ever anywhere? Where do they see no
fear? I'm talking about in leadership. Where do they see Jesus as the paradigm? It's, it's,
yeah. So anyway, so that's what I think is like, the U.S. is great because I think it started that
way, but we got rich and we got powerful. And then, yeah, geography and all of those things
helped, of course.
But once we got rich, you know, then you can start, you got to start protecting that wealth, right?
And using it.
And then we, and then so education changed to not how do we know what we know, but how do we
get the best paying jobs possible?
That's our education system.
How do you get the highest paying job possible?
Which means all of your service vocations are unimportant.
Yeah.
Nobody wants to be a public school team.
teacher.
No, but that one wants to be an influencer, you know?
Yeah, that's right.
Oh, man.
Jamo and ask you a little bit, since we are a spiritual warfare show, and obviously we have a
real enemy, you have a tremendous amount of experience now helping people deal with fear
and a scarcity mindset.
And I want to talk a little bit about identity exchange.
And there's some interesting parallels between that and how actually Father Martins and
many of the spiritual warfare kind of veterans, if you know,
you will, come on the show and talked about how they do deliverance ministry. So maybe it's just
a little quick little intro. Could you give the listeners a little taste of identity exchange and
kind of this framework that you bring to not just people of faith, but also to the private sector
and to businesses as well, but maybe kind of the crux of identity exchange? Yeah. And this is where I think
you, I think, you know, what you said earlier about exorcism is so important.
because we definitely need it.
So I can say, based on my understanding of Scripture and then my experience in the world
and then just reading history and anthropology and economics and all that stuff,
is that pretty much any audience I'm talking to, whether it's one person or 100,
in any country at any time of any faith background at all or none.
They're operating in a false identity in a separation worldview.
I just assume it because that's what 99% of the world operates in all the time.
is a separation worldview, which is sourced in a wrong view of yourself, a wrong view of God,
and a wrong view of who your neighbor is. It's the inversion of the Great Commandment.
So what do those mean? If you tie those out, so if I'm, if I said, hey, Jamie, I'm struggling
with those, what does that mean to someone listening? What is a separation worldview? What is a
scarcity mindset? What are those? Right. The separation worldview is the belief that I have to
separate from others because there's not enough for all of us. That's basically the
So the scarcity mindset or worldview is there's just not enough of anything.
There's not enough time.
There's not enough money.
There's not enough opportunity.
There's not enough people like me.
There's not enough love.
There's just not enough of anything, which translates down to I'm not enough also, ultimately.
So the scarcity, once you believe that there's really not enough of name it, then the question
is, well, what are we going to do about that?
There's not enough.
So then I have to be certain. It leads to certainty. I've got to be certain that I carve out what I need.
Right. And so, so I've got to self-protect and self-promote. I have to. I want to love my neighbor. I want to do that stuff. But I've got to think of me first. That's separation. I've got to, I can't really connect around me because ultimately I'm in competition with everybody. And so that starts very young in kids when they start to learn. You're going to be right.
right away. Here we go. Even, it's funny, even into the percentile of your kid's skull.
Everything's, he's in the 57th percentile. Like, what? Already he's only 57 percent. Like, already the
measurements begin. And then, so the scarcity system is a system based on measurable outcomes,
just measurables. How can we get what we want to happen? And so that, and so again, to do that,
you can't go like to China and go, hey, let's work.
on a quantum computer together. You can't do it because they might use it against us. What if they
get it first? Like we can't cooperate. It prevents cooperation. And so I can't, you know, in the
police department I was in, they do a promotional opportunity maybe every two years for a thousand
applicants. Like this is your one chance. Am I going to study together and help other people pass?
No. And then they do quota systems. And then there's the
conflict in the quota systems. And it's just this constant limited resources, limited opportunity,
and it creates separation, search for certainty, and self-protection and self-promotion.
So as soon as I move into self-protection and self-promotion, I've lost the truth of who I really
am. I'm now in an identity that's all about, well, what do I need to be to get to that
thing? Who do I need to impress to get to that thing? And so the whole world becomes
fragmented and the separation of worldview is is the fruit of the separation world view is
constant conflict constant never-ending conflict because you can't get out of it because they have
oil we don't have oil what are we going to do you know we're going to go get it that's what we're
going to do and then say it's for the good of everybody but really it's really just for our good
like that's our justification is we got to have it we what are we going to do die that's the
separation worldview right and so you can't love your name
You can't really love your neighbor. And so that's a separation of worldview. And so what comes out of it is,
what's my true identity. My true identity comes from what I have, what I do, and what people think about me.
That's my identity. And that's what you're trying to earn. So that's what people know. That's what kids know.
And when we're in schools, we ask them all the time, like, who do you think you are? Or tell us about yourself.
they will tell you what's wrong with them.
They already know.
Do you view this all?
So if I was to go back and say, you know, do you view this as a demonic strategy that
began in the beginning?
Because it sounds like you could just distill this all down to that scarcity just comes
from a wrong view because if God is who he says he is, then there wouldn't really be any
issues.
And yet I also appreciate there are real constraints that we live in the world.
The best example, of course, is a life raft, right?
You know, and I'm curious how you walk through like frameworks like that when there are actual, you know, organic constraints versus what I really, you know, appreciate is the, you know, from the very beginning from King coveting able sacrifice, right?
Or even Eve, you know, putting unnecessary boundaries, you know, around what they could do, what got like already altering what God said.
Right.
It seems like all this is a perfect demonic ploy to rob us of the abundant life.
Yeah.
This is why we need like, I know there's dramatic exorcisms, but this is the one we need probably every day.
Yeah, from this, this is a hundred percent the lie of the liar, the greatest lie, is that something's wrong with you.
Something's wrong with you.
That's, and God's not going to help you.
You got to do it yourself.
And so like when I'm, when people, so I was asking these venture capital disguise, you know, like, how do you deal with, you know, kingdom versus.
empire thinking. Like, because they're, Caesar and Jesus are not friends. Like, there.
We've got to, we can only pick Caesar or Jesus. You can't serve two masters. Jesus is a very
heavy duty on this topic. You can't serve God and Mammon. Like, you can't. But we think you can.
Oh, yes, you can. We keep telling God, oh, yes, we can. That's the, that's the demonic talking
100%. Yeah. But we're, it's so beautifully disguised in prosperity.
or whatever, or good stewardship, or whatever, the lie is so beautifully told. The angel of light is so
beautiful that we don't even know it's there anymore. Like, that's what scares me. And when a person's
really deep down into it and the demonic is just physically destroying them, then we look at it.
We're like, oh, yeah, they're there. They're possessed. It's like, yeah, but the whole thing,
the whole thing is like that. And so this is, here's, here's a demonic statement. I'm asking these
guys, how do you do with kingdom? And they said, well, you know,
we like to be joyful. I'm like, that's not, now, like, joyful. I'm talking about, like, how do you,
how do you, like, counter the empire mentality of debt and all that? And they said, well, we have to,
we have to deal with the reality of scarcity. That's the lie right there. Scarcity does not exist
in the world. It does not exist. The only place scarcity exists is where humans created it.
God didn't create scarcity. He created it. He created it.
enough. Humans create scarcity, and then we call it the reality. But it's a reality we made,
not God. And so as soon as we start calling the lie, the reality, we're in big trouble.
And so, like, if you're in a life raft and, you know, only what if everyone in the life raft is,
I will give my life up for you right now. You don't have a debate in the life raft. But if it's like,
I got to save my own life or I got to save this life,
then you're already in teams. You've already split. You're already in separation. You probably don't
even have to think about it. You'll separate immediately. As soon as you get in the situation,
you'll go, self-protect, self-protect. And Jesus is like, no, no, no. He who seeks to save his own
life, guaranteed you're going to lose it. We don't believe it. We don't believe that.
So I want to do a little segment here because you have this incredible work with identity
exchange. We help people hear the Holy Spirit and help them understand who they really are. And it sounds like,
You know, on this show, Father Martins talks a lot about how demons are constantly, I mean, he is the
father of lies.
And so these demons are constantly lying to us.
And I've listened to a lot of your talks over the years.
And so I want to try something here, Jamie, just to kind of document the spiritual war, as you've
seen it, where does it begin?
Like, so from the moment I'm born or just start to become aware, it feels like the world and
the enemy are all conspiring, et cetera.
And I'm curious.
So where does the war begin?
and then where do those lies start creeping in?
And then what are those lies that you see kind of play out in our lives right now
that open the door for the enemy to just rob us of the abundant life?
Yeah, I think so you're born.
I think, you know, and there's a lot of, you know, theological debate of, you know,
the state that you're born in sin or, you know.
Sure, sure.
Original sin or original blessing.
All that.
All that.
So let's say you're born a blank slate.
Let's say that.
You're born a blank slate, but you're born into a.
scarcity separation world. I mean, we're hook, line, and sinker into the lie, basically overall.
It's what we believe in. It's what we operate in. So it doesn't take a child long, even in a
great family, which is unusual, to learn very quickly that the reality of the world is,
you got to watch out for yourself. And you're not so like watching my grandkids, you know,
they have great, you know, they're great parents. They love their,
kids, they pray with them. They talk about identity, all that stuff with them. But when those, especially
the girls that are now just going into middle school, to watch them encountering the lie.
Because they're going to do it. I mean, they can't avoid it. They're going to, it's going to hit them.
And it hits them hard and it's mean. And it's, it's painful. But so like they, you know, they would call us up,
you know, from wherever they live. And they want, do they do these shows for us, you know,
and they're dressed up and they sing. And they, and they think they're beautiful. And they
think they're amazing singers and they think they're great actresses and they're and they're nothing
but potential and imagination and this gorgeous you know the way god wants us as to come to him in this same
way knowing that he loves you he thinks you're amazing he thinks you're beautiful god's not disappointed
in you like that's how they act until one day they're at school and someone says you know you're ugly
or you're a terrible singer.
That's a good singer.
You're not that good.
Then the lie comes.
So the truth is, you may not be as good a singer as them.
That's not how the lie works.
The lie works is something's wrong with you.
Like something's wrong with you.
She's better than you.
What does that mean?
She sings, she's a more gifted singer than you.
Okay, I don't get my identity from that.
Oh, yes, but they do.
Right?
And so the lie comes in.
And instead of saying, instead of saying as a human, you go, God, this is, this makes me feel like
something's wrong with me.
What do you say?
This is Eve's big mistake.
She's dialoguing with the enemy the whole time.
She never just goes, God, what do you think about this right now?
He's right there with her.
Why doesn't she turn to him and go, what do you think about what he's saying?
Because it's, it's affecting me.
Like, I'm like, this is making me think differently.
unless those kids have a resource of exercising the lie right on the spot, the lie will start to
oppress them. It'll start to become real to them. And it can possess them completely to where
their whole life is nothing. But I got to these people got to like me. I got to make these people
like to their own demise. Right. And so how early does that start in kids? Early. Early.
When we're doing inner healing, you know, with kids, or adults, none of the adults are going,
yeah, I remember when I was 45 and I started, it's like when I was seven, when I was six,
I realized something's wrong with me, that I'm flawed.
Or I ask, and I would love to hear how some of the different clergy that you talk to, respond to this too,
because everywhere I am, I'm asked people, especially young people, do you think God's disappointed
you? Do you believe God's disappointed in you? And they all say yes. And I'm like, where do you get that from?
Who told, did God come to you and say, I'm really disappointed in you? Or is the liar coming to you every
single day and saying, God's pretty disappointed in you? And you go, I agree. I agree with that lie. That's the
empowering of the enemy right there. So like I, in Indonesia, I had guys all the time that said, we have the power to
kill you by pointing at you. And when I was a cop, and we'd have to go into the gypsy community,
they were always throwing curses and cops got really sick from them. But I didn't.
Why? Because I don't agree with it. I don't empower it. I'm like, no, I reject that in the name
of Jesus. I can give it power. I can totally, I can say, come on in. Yep, come on in, curse.
Come on in. You should be ashamed of yourself. Adam and Eve. Like, the enemy told him,
they should be ashamed of themselves. They told God never said it to them. Right. And so I'm asking
high school kids, in a Christian school, raise 400 of them. Raise your hand if you feel like God's
disappointed in you. All of them raised their hand. Where do you read the Bible and get God is
disappointed in you? Have you, did Jesus walk around telling people how disappointed he was in him?
Or did he walk around walking them out of the lies they believed about themselves,
casting out their demons, healing their sicknesses and diseases, and then teaching them about the kingdom.
This is why the exorcism part is so important.
But on all these different levels, right?
And fortunately, you have these people that can really go into the deep down, deep lies that people are, that's destroying them.
But we probably need it at every level.
For the average Christian, what are some of the biggest lies that, you?
you encounter now having worked with thousands of people and been around the world, what are the
most common, if we're going to play like 80, 20, with lies that if you're human and you're breathing,
you probably have believed this. You've mentioned, you know, being a perpetual disappointment to
God. And obviously, we all sin and fall short. And there's a difference between conviction of
knowing, I grieved you, God. I'm sorry, but you still love me. But what are some of the lies right now
that you find most transformative when people identify and replace them?
things like I'm unworthy. I'm not worthy. I'm shameful.
These are deep down. These are root. I'm shameful. So guilty is what you're talking about.
I'm guilty. That just means I am acknowledging that I did this wrong.
Shame is a guilt is I did something wrong. Shame is something's wrong with me. It's a killer for
humans. And so I am ashamed. I am unworthy. I'm in. I'm in.
visible. No one sees me. I'm of no consequence. I'm not enough. I'm not smart. I'm ugly.
It's so simple to do with people when people say, well, I can't, I can't hear from God or, you know,
God's, I got to get closer to God. I'm like, you can't get closer to him. What you can do is
listen to him. He's not, he can't get any closer than he is in you. What it is is, you're not paying
attention to what he says, you're paying attention to what the enemy says. And so we just say this simple,
and for all of your listeners, it's easy, all of us, I have to do this every day. What are things I believe
about myself that God never said? What are things I believe about myself that God never said about me?
That offends God that we believe what other people, spirits say about us instead of what he says about
us.
Like, that's, right?
So I guess, so let me, if I came in, say you were coaching me right now and I would say,
hey, you know, since I was younger and I don't know where all these lies like creep in,
but for example, I think we talked about it was like, if someone who I'm, and I don't know,
I like competition, it brings out the bet.
I like actually like, it's fun.
I'm big into sports.
Right.
That twinge that has like plagued me for since I was younger where if someone else who's like,
and if it's apples to apples and they.
they win or they get a huge breakthrough.
And my first reaction will be a twinge of just like,
eh, right?
And like really God,
that person,
right?
And then,
you know,
my measure of my spiritual maturity is how quickly I recognize that and go.
But say I said,
Jamie,
that's something I'm wrestle with is I,
I find myself not rejoicing other people's immediate success right away.
What would be the,
if I was in your class,
how would we deal with that?
So I was,
so the first question and I love,
this is what we asked little kids all the time,
your feelings are are the signposts to the lie that you believe your feelings your emotions they're so
they're given to you by God feel all of them all emotions are given to you by God and so and then there's
some emotions that we call God emotions and there's some emotions that um you know are hurtful but
they're all still helpful so if I would say to you okay so how does it make you feel that that person
succeeded and you did it how what's the feeling what's the
emotion that you feel. That's what people have a hard time with. Like, what's the emotion that you feel?
And so you can answer that, but I can, you know, humans, when you ask a human about a negative
emotion, like they'll say, okay, that made me feel bad. Okay, well, bad's not an emotion. How did you
feel? What's the feeling that you felt? And they'll say something like, well, I felt jealous.
Okay, that's called anger. Don't get hung up on jealous.
Anger. Anger. Angery. Jealousy is a kind of anger. Okay. All right. What were you angry about?
What were you angry about? Right? And this is the emotion anger is pointing to you. So humans, whether you're a communist Chinese or a Muslim or a Catholic or a Protestant or an atheist, humans can only get angry about injustice. That's the
only thing that generates anger in a human being. Anytime there, when a kid's throwing a temper tantrum
in a store, that kid thinks an injustice has occurred. He may be wrong, but, but it's real or
perceived injustice creates immediate anger in humans and it should. It's supposed to because-
So I felt entitled to it then. That's why I'm, I feel, I was like, oh, it should have been me.
Right. Okay. All right. So how does it make, so it should have been me. I feel like the injustice is,
it should have been me, right? Okay, so how does it make you feel then that it wasn't you?
Like, what is that? How does that make you feel that it wasn't you? It should have been you.
Okay, maybe, maybe you did deserve it, but it wasn't you. How does that make you feel?
Yeah, it's interesting because if I put a button on this, I would say that for me,
anytime I try and process things, it ultimately comes down to a fear of worthiness.
Like, example, if I don't have that title or that economic gain or,
that accomplishment or accolade that somehow I'll be less valuable in the eyes of my peers
or others as matter and therefore I will somehow be less valuable and you know I just will ultimately
I think it comes down to just that's that's the if I were to sit across from me and
I'd be yeah that's probably what is you you're tying your value to your accomplishments
and so when those are robbed from you you you feel less identity and belonging right so
So then if you put an I am statement with that, so I'm not valuable.
I have no valuable.
Then you would say, okay, make an identity statement about that.
I am what?
Yeah.
Well, I mean, a true statement is like, I am loved by God and I am wonderfully and fearfully made.
But that's what you think up here.
But that's not what you believe down in your heart.
Because if you believe that down in your heart, you would cheer that person.
And you would say, yeah, but that's not what you're doing.
So the actual identity statement is, I feel, I feel like it was an injustice because I deserve that or, okay, so what does that mean?
So what, so without the accomplishment, what are, what's your value with, if you have zero accomplishments, what's your value?
I am what, what do?
I'm nothing without my accomplishments.
Right.
That's the, that's the.
So the identity that you're working in is I am worthless.
you've got to get something to give you value or worth because on your own by yourself,
just you, by yourself all alone, you have no value.
That's what you believe about.
And that's a lie.
And I would recognize that that's a lie from the pit of hell.
Right.
But the thing is, you were taught that you have no value.
You had to learn that you had no value because when we're born, we have all kinds of value.
But you are taught, you learn, someone tells you or you figure out, you know,
what? Unless I do this, this and this, I'm now figuring out, I have no value. And so the inner
healing part is where did, where did you learn that lie? Who told you? I could tell you exactly.
And I've, because I've talked to Bill about this. And the cool thing, too, is like, I can say this
now and also be like, yeah, I by blessed by the blessings of following Jesus over time, you know,
it's that the time to repentance metric is the one that gets better. And you're like, oh, like,
recognize that cool. Call it out. Be like, cool. That's just the.
flesh being like burned away and i've come so far in that but i actually it's like i was there were
seasons where i was um you know made fun of a lot i was just a really overweight kid and that's where i
actually developed my sense of humor so i'm grateful in one sense for uh mom's lack of uh you know
nutritional discipline with me in some areas but uh the other part is i remember i learned if you
helped kids with their homework right and because i had a photographic memory and i could just
like breeze through stuff right and i was like oh well i just become the smart kid right and i can just help
And I learned pretty early on by about like age 11 or 12 that I could license,
I could license my cognition to.
And it's like, oh, well, as long as people need you for some sort of work or whatever,
then you always will be around and be the role.
And I think part is because I think it was a season where I wasn't invited to a lot of
stuff and I felt ostracized, but I learned, oh, if you're valuable, right, they can't get
rid of you.
They need you.
They need you to be in there.
And so that was, so that's actually, I would see, I was probably like around 12 years
old is probably that, you know, truth crept in pretty, pretty quick. And I look today and I see,
there's still echoes of that. I wonder how many of us have seventh grade trauma, you know.
Yeah. That's right. I mean, that's where it all starts. You know, mine is I'm a disappointment.
That's my killer lie. And I can, I learned it from my mom saying it to me. Like, that's what I,
and because she was trying to get me to go to church and stuff. And so she would say, you know,
if you don't go to church, God's disappointed in you and so am I. They're trying to help me,
trying to motivate me.
But all I kept pulling out of that was I'm, God's disappointed in me.
God's disappointed in me.
And is going to church once enough to make him like me?
No, probably not because I didn't go as much as those guys and I don't witness as much
as those people and I don't pray as much as that person.
And it's a treadmill you can't get off of.
Like when is he pleased?
When you're in second grade and he's already disappointed in you.
So when you get down to the I am worthless, then what we would do is just focus on
Lord, bring to my mind a specific moment when I learned that I am worthless.
And in that moment, in that incident, Christ was right with you.
He was right with you and he was speaking to you.
When the world's telling you lies, he's right there with you, telling you the truth about
what he thinks about you.
And to go back to that and let him, you know, create a new neural pathway.
and like, Jesus, I need to know what you said on that day, because this is what I pulled out of it for the next
40 years is I'm a disappointment and I can't work my way out of it. And you know why? Because you can't
work your way out of a lie. Time doesn't take away a lie. Works don't take away a lie. Only the
truth can take away a lie. And so you have to, if you were like working on our team and I worked
through this with you, just like anyone on our team, then I would know, I would
go out of my way all the time to tell you how valuable you are to us. Because I know the lie that
you believe in. And my team says to me all the time, you've never disappointed us. We don't have to
be talking about it. Hey, Jamie, we just want you know you've never been a disappointment to us.
Another guy on our team who's always felt like he doesn't belong. He's always had to work to belong,
which makes no one want him. Because when you work to belong, no one wants you. And the lie just
gets more intense. And I tell him all the time, you know you belong on our.
team. You know that, no. Because we're countering the lie with the truth. And that makes a team go like
this. Can you imagine a neighborhood where you were doing that with each other? Well, I'm thinking just for the,
you know, I'm not married, but I imagine this has to be transformative for married couples because you
should bring in your wounding and if you know how to meet someone. And I also love too, it's like you're
not promising, hey, for, you know, for five easy payments of $9.99, we can dispel the lie. And it's good.
It sounds like for a lot of us that you don't just drop a lie. And then,
suddenly you're just, and this is actually true in the exorcism ministry is that, you know, people are set free and it's amazing.
But for it's not, for most people, it's not like, oh, the temptation of the door was open.
It's not like it just goes away forever.
It's like that was right.
There's a scar there.
And it sounds like you all are acknowledging that, yeah, you're not getting instantaneous delivery of a lie for 40 years.
No, because even when Jesus faces the enemy and the temptation and, you know, sort of has the victory there, it still says, and then Satan left and waited for a more opportune time.
It's like the lie's not going away.
You just stop empowering it, but it's always there.
Now when I do groups where I'm in, where there's a high level of hostility in the group between each other,
and I'm brought in, I'm a third party coming in.
I tell them right at the beginning.
I just want you guys to know that my biggest fear right now is that I'm going to disappoint you.
I'm just going to say that out loud because I'm going to take it away from the enemy doing it.
And I want you to know that even though that scares me that I might be.
be a disappointment to you, that is not going to prevent me from giving you the gift of who I am.
And that's the wit.
There's the victory.
So I'm shutting down the enemy and I'm giving the victory to the Lord.
But it allows then people in the room to say, wow, we never thought about what we're afraid of coming
into this meeting.
So if you have a person, you know, in the meetings, you're trying to build reconciliation
with people that think they're unworthy and they're not smart, you're never going to have
reconciliation because they're all dealing in these false identities trying to.
have some redemptive result.
It doesn't work.
So we have this beautiful process.
Now, so much this, so Jamie, you are pretty renowned for these crazy stories and being
Holy Spirit led, which invites, it's interesting that this is still a huge divide in the
Christian church, you know, with some factions saying that, you know, of course God speaks,
but probably not as much.
Or, you know, well, it maybe speaks to Jamie, but doesn't speak to me like that, et cetera.
one of the things that I have loved about following your career is that you've invited the Holy Spirit into situations that have led that basically under the premise of I don't have the answer but scripture says that I have access to like the mind of minds and I'm just going to bank on asking him for advice there.
So your most famous story and I won't make you rehash the whole thing there, but your most famous story that is probably well known is that you invited this into your law enforcement career.
And famously were told by the Holy Spirit or you felt led by the Holy Spirit to de-arrest someone,
which potentially could have come with enormous repercussions, disciplinary actions,
also social stigma from your peers.
And that action seemed ludicrous at the time and did cause short-term pain for weeks,
but ultimately led to a beautiful relationship with the individual you de-arrested,
who ended up being an informant and a source and helped to bring about a greater good
and downfall of a particular drug organization and turned into a beautiful friendship.
It's an incredible story.
I recommend everyone go check it out.
And I'm curious, Jamie, you know, when did it first start for you to say, you know what?
Like, everyone's trying to.
We're just racking our heads here.
Like, why not just ask God, hey, you probably know what to do, you know?
When did that begin, like a pattern for you?
Well, yeah, I don't even know if it was a pattern back then when I was doing it.
I started trying stuff out when I was a police officer.
And then, you know, and just being in these situations, and the way I would talk about it is that it's like I, if my training, if my training told me what to do in a situation, I would just basically do what I was trained to do.
But there were moments when the training didn't go far enough or it didn't work at all.
That's when I started saying, well, what if you do, what do you do if your training doesn't apply to this?
then like where do you go and so then i i would look in scripture and like well they did these guys
didn't really have training so they had knowledge of things but when they didn't know what to do
necessarily what was their next course of action and then it was like you know in the old
testament you know like throw the ephod or you know something like like they were they had some
divine way to appeal to go to a greater source of knowledge and then you know when you get into
you know the gospels in jesus doing what that he he he he
saying what he hears the father saying and doing what he sees the father doing,
it's then like, well, what does that mean? And like, do we, can we do that? And,
um, and then pray for wisdom and these kinds. And so I just started, it's like,
it's like working out. You just like start at the basic level. Because because God made a
world that's all process. It's all processes. And so you, and his process is you start at the
bottom and you work and you try and you learn. And so I just started doing that. And the,
and then I would note, okay, like that. That was a,
interesting how that went. This one didn't go that as well. Like, Lord, what do you want me to
know about that? Like, did I was a two? What are some examples of those kind of baby step ones?
Before we get to you saying, Holy Spirit, how can I bring five Palestinian, you know,
militants to a Texas Christian camp? We build up to that. What were some little things? You're like,
huh, I'm just going to, I want to try this. Just little, little things like going out on a shift
and saying, Lord, like, where should I pay attention to tonight?
Like, is there, are there a place?
I mean, I know I can just go to this one bad neighborhood and all night.
Yeah.
Which is what most cops do.
I mean, if you get, if you get rated on number of arrests, there's places where you go,
you make a lot of arrest, but they're all in the same neighborhood.
And the same people get arrested 10,000 times.
But it's like, where should I, where can I go, Lord, that you would want me to go?
And just learning how to have a sense.
Like, what, how does, are we?
ask people all the time. Okay, let's practice this. I give these exercises to people and like,
okay, just spend 10 minutes a day trying to empty your mind and just say, God, what do you
want me to think about right now? It doesn't matter what it is. Write it down. And it's so
interesting. And people will say, like, well, first of all, I kept falling asleep. And like,
okay, you know what that means? You need to rest, my friend. Like, your brain doesn't know what to do
when you be quiet. And you don't know how to be quiet. So look, and so fall asleep every time.
Go ahead. Go ahead. You'll stop. And then they stop because they, oh,
their body's like, oh, we're going to rest.
Okay, what are you thinking about?
One guy called me two days ago, and he goes, he goes, it's so weird.
He goes, I just hear birds all the time.
I can, you know, I'm outside and I just, I've never paid attention to the birds.
So he started doing a scripture study on what do birds represent in the Bible?
Provision.
God always sees you.
And so now he's diving down deep into, well, what does a sparrow represent?
Like, it turned into this huge exercise like that.
And so just practice, I would just practice on those little things.
or I would, you know, I would make a traffic stop and like, Lord, what would you do with this person?
Like, I know I can write him a ticket.
I can, like, what would you, would you do something different with this person?
Or what would you ask them?
What would you say to this person?
And I started doing that and watching people respond to me and just, because I was a cop,
they're like, why are you asking me that?
And then they would tell you things.
And like, or I would go on a complaint, you know, of suspicious person.
Now I would knock on the door of the person and report.
Like, are you okay?
What's going on in your life right now?
instead of like there's nobody just doing that kind of stuff and just watching it go out like this.
But and then.
Yeah, I'm curious.
I'll sorry.
No.
No, I'm just saying it made everything important.
Yeah.
So I'm curious to you because obviously a lot of us want to fix it on this because, yeah, and again, it's important to recognize.
I think, you know, that God is always speaking.
And thankfully, we have scripture and we have a church and we have things.
We have like boundaries.
We have guardrails to like run this by.
but I know a lot of people are like fixated on like and it's different for everybody right I
have found that God has spoken to me through movie images um throughout my entire life I can't
tell them over times I would be um as a teenager or as a college kid and I just suddenly have this
sensational appetite to watch a movie and I turn on the TV and it actually be on back on the days when
there's cable and AMC was always running you know and the movie would be on and it'd be the weirdest
like non-secur and I'd watch it and there'd be one moment one scene in the movie and the
room would freeze and God go, that's, that's the scene I want you. And the best example is I actually
had a, I've had this craving to watch the karate kid, the original. And I'm like, I haven't
seen this movie in 20 years. And it was a couple years ago. And I thought, all right, God,
I'll just, you want to watch a movie, which feels weird already because there's probably another lie.
Lord, I don't want to watch a movie right now. It's not, it's not productive. I'm not making
money. I'm not doing stuff, right? And he's like, no, I want you to watch a movie. And I'm like,
sure, everyone's going to think I'm just being lazy. So I turned on a karate kid and it's a sweet,
but it's a great movie, right?
But like, yeah, there's just, I mean, it's obviously the famous scene.
But like that final part when, you know, Daniel's like, I'm done with this and I'm stupid.
I'm tired of washing your cars on stuff.
And Miyagi's like, Daniel, son, show me the fence, right?
And that moment where he's like, you've been training me my whole life for something with all these mundane actions.
And I was like, whoa, God has been Miyagiing me.
And then as a cool thing, a couple days later, I was at a pastor John Mark Homer.
really well-known pastor and I say, hey, would you, would you pray for me? We were at a dinner and he goes, sure.
And he goes, all right. I was like, I want to lean in this more. And he goes, and he knows nothing.
And he goes, I just feel like Jesus is Miyagi and you right now. Wow. It was really cool.
And I was like, man, you have no idea how much of that means. So anyways, I'm curious for you, you know, is it images? Is it just, do you recognize it as thoughts?
Do you get sensations in your body? Like, you know, when you would pull up and you're,
pull me over to the side of the road because I was going just two miles over the speed limit.
I wouldn't pull you.
Yeah.
What was the dialogue?
When you're saying, God, what do you have for this person?
What's that discourse look like?
Yeah.
Like, so, yeah, for me, it's like it's either, I love what you're saying about the movies.
It is so I tell people all the time, learn how God talks to you.
Learn, learn.
Because he'll be consistent.
He will do consistently.
He wants to be, so that you have a rhythm that you know that.
I know.
That's God.
That's where he talks to me.
Learn that.
He wants you to get that.
There's one frequency that I turn to, and there he is.
That's what he wants because there's a million frequencies with a lot of jabber going on.
But when you turn into this, tune into this one, that's him.
I love how you said that.
That's really beautiful.
And people do it all different ways.
But for me, it's like I did, we did an exercise last night, just me and my wife.
And it's like words, just like a word.
Bam, just a word.
I can just actually see the word.
like written out, just that word or a sentence. That's a lot of times what it is. Just a word or a sentence. And then I just
chase it down. Like, wow, what does that mean? What does that sentence mean? And we call it intuitive,
you know, intuitive to rational right brain, left brain. Or like you're just pulling it down and like,
okay, God's giving you the word. Okay, now go chase it. Like he loves it. He's giving you this. He says this thing in
this movie. Okay, chase him on it now. Like he gave it to you. There it is. Okay, now work it out.
there's probably 20 meanings in there to dig out.
And so for me, it's a word usually like that or a sentence.
And when it's something really evil, it's a feeling I get in my body.
Like, yeah.
But that's typically only when it's like, this is really bad.
This is a bad situation.
I'll get that feeling in my body.
And there's been times I've looked at Donna and said, I need you to leave.
I need you to get in the car and drive away right now.
Just tell her to leave.
Yeah, because something's just wrong.
And I don't want to leave, but I want her to leave if she's with me.
And then, yeah, and I'll just, I'm more sense.
She's not sensitive to that.
It's so interesting.
And in Iraq, you know, I would get up in the middle of the night and I would just go,
something's wrong.
What is wrong?
And I just pace around the house, go check on our kids.
Like, what's wrong?
It's not them.
It's not her.
What is, something's wrong.
And I just pray through it and take.
I understand what it is.
But that's a very, that's based on evil.
There's evil about.
But the rest of the time is just these phrases or words.
Do you have any examples?
So as you start to grow in this, I'm curious, are there any other kind of, as you
kind of leveled up?
And we always kind of all of us are like, Lord, I want you to speak to me loudly.
And I always think about that.
Like, usually you don't.
Because if God's speaking pretty loudly, it usually means there's really tough times ahead.
Like all the examples are like, you're going to suffer.
much for my sake. Good job. Actually, I'll take the small movie quote for now. But what are some
examples where the Holy Spirit has provided you? And I'm working our way up to the crazier story here.
But what are some examples if you have any that the Holy Spirit? Like, you know, you felt like God
gave you a solution to something that just kind of defied human wisdom or it seemed illogical
a la Jericho. Like, we're going to go march with instruments. And that makes no sense.
but God's like, no, I want you to do that because, you know, we always, Father says in the show, like, God's not calling you to be successful.
He's calling you to be faithful.
And thankfully, we get to be successful sometimes, but I'm asking you just to step out phase.
So I'm curious if there's examples where you feel like to encourage others like, hey, yeah, listen to Holy Spirit.
He might have some really interesting ideas if you just take the time to listen.
Yeah, I think a lot of them are really like tactical and strategic ideas when you're trying to like accomplish.
something. I think it's really important that you verify that God has invited you into what you're
getting ready to do. Like I'm a, I'm like, don't, don't go do something crazy just to see what God will do.
Don't do that. That's a bad, that's a bad pattern. We ask God, are you inviting me into this?
Are you inviting me into this? Is this you inviting me? Not my ego. Are you inviting me into this?
because once we're pretty clear on that, it takes away a lot of your hesitation to try stuff.
So that's a big one.
Like, Lord, why am I going to do this or why am I about to try this?
Is this for me, you know, am I trying to validate myself?
Like, and just as, as close as you can get to a pure motive, there's always a little
bit of stuff in there, but because you want to be successful for sure.
And then, so once I have that sense in it's like, okay, so what's the way to think
about this? How do we think about this? Like, I know I can go do, but is there another way to think
about this? And so, like, in our church in D.C., when I came out of the police department and we were
waiting to go, take an overseas assignment in my church, they didn't have an international
ministry. I mean, we lived in D.C. I mean, there's like international everywhere, but we didn't
have, like, a good international ministry. And so they asked me, you know, what I consider working on
something like that. And I was like, okay, but I don't have any ministry experience.
starting an international ministry.
And I read stuff about it.
Like I don't know.
And so I thought, what I was asking the Lord, like, what, how would you start an international
ministry?
And he, he, he, it was like not, it was smart.
It was just like, go into the neighborhoods where you were a cop.
Go in there.
And you know who the leaders of those neighborhoods are.
Like go only instead of going in there, you know, trying to figure out crime rings,
go in there and figure out which one of those leaders, you know, you know,
you know, are open to the kingdom or that you can share the gospel with.
And so this is the first time I started thinking about, well, how does a Buddhist think?
I don't know.
How does the Afghan refugees in the neighborhood?
How do they think?
How do they, you know, versus when you're a cop and they pretty much got to talk to you or not.
And so that, then it was just like, so then I, you know, the one story I love is, you know,
in the Lao community and just meeting this, the senior, the May too, they called her,
the grandmother of the whole community.
and she purportedly had these gold bars in her apartment.
She lived on the top floor of this subsidized building.
And these young Lao guys guarded her all the time.
They had the gang around that building all the time.
And I went and met with her with a translator, another Thai woman that went with me.
And just talking to her.
And she's very Buddhist and very committed to Buddhism and all this and had her, you know, the Buddha altar shop.
And I just got asked in a Lord, how do you, how do you talk to her?
I mean, she can't speak English. She's Buddhist. She doesn't care anything about becoming a Christian. Not interested. How do you talk to a woman like this? And so, and I just had the idea, and this is way before Indonesia and all that, that she's in a power, fear culture. So I asked her, like, who protects her? I just, does Buddha protect you? And she said, well, different spirits protect me. And I asked her, I said, you know, there's a rumor, you know, that you got a lot of money up in here. Like, aren't you nervous? And she goes, she said, no. And I said, no. And I said, what?
Well, what if I said to you that Jesus has more power than all of the gods?
What would you say?
And she said, he'd have to prove it.
Like, you can tell me all day long, but why would I believe it unless I saw proof of it?
And I said, is it okay if I ask him to prove that he's more powerful than.
And she said, yeah, but whatever, sure.
And I didn't know what that.
I would never have done that before, you know, have like.
And so I did it.
I just said, Lord, you know, in some way would you show her that you're the most powerful?
Like, just so she can be safe with you and not trust this other stuff that's going to break down on her.
She thought that was really sweet.
And then her house got broken into.
Somehow they got up to.
Even with her protection.
She didn't know.
She didn't know Jesus could protect her.
So her house got broken into this one night.
I don't know how they got in.
They kicked the door.
I mean, she had gang.
She had guards, right?
I might have been her own guys.
I don't know.
But whoever it was, so they broke in and she was in her room.
And she's a little tiny lady.
and she just stayed and she just said, okay, Jesus, protect my gold bars.
Because she had two of them on the table in the living room.
And she goes, okay, here's the test.
Here's the test because they're in my apartment and they're looking around.
And so she just waits until they leave and they left.
And she gets up and the bars are sitting on the table untouched.
And she's like, hmm, huh.
So she makes contact with us and she said, I want you to know that this happened.
She said, so I'm starting to think maybe Jesus is the one.
And so I said, okay, good.
Well, we're just going to keep praying that he keeps demonstrating his care and concern for you.
Because she felt like he really cared about her.
You know, it wasn't like he's a guard.
It's like, no, they got in my apartment and he protected me, me and them and the gold.
And so then weeks later, she was walking back from, there was a bike path through these trees to a grocery store.
where robberies happened every night just about.
She was walking back and she had dropped her watch.
She didn't know or whatever.
And it was this valuable watch.
And she gets home and she realizes, oh, my gosh, I dropped that watch somewhere on the path.
It's night.
She goes, I'm just going to see if Jesus will take care of that.
She didn't even get her guys to go look.
She just said, no, I'm going to see.
And so she said, she prayed.
And she said, Jesus, I know you did that.
Can you find my watch?
Can you protect my watch?
And then next, she waits until the morning.
In the morning, in the morning, she sends her guys down and they come back with the watch laying right in the middle of the path.
And so she brought 40, 40 Lao people to church the next Sunday.
Wow.
It just, wow, what a now.
And we all have, what's the gold bar in all our life that we're just like clinging to?
It's like, oh, man, what a story.
So, you know, I've been working up to this story.
And I know I hate to make you tell it again, but it's a super interesting.
Actually, before I do that, though, because this is not.
not your first run in with supernatural protection of items.
You know, we talked a little bit of this Middle East section, but you have apparently
a shy dinner guest that never wants to come into the tent and eat with you when you're
in the Sahara.
Tell the folks a little bit, that's a quicker one, but tell us, tell about that because I
think a lot of our friends will go, oh, guardian angel, awesome.
Yeah, yeah.
So, yeah, it was in this camp we were in in the Sahara with these Muslims.
And I had been in there before.
These other guys hadn't been with me, these other two guys.
And so I took them with me.
And you have to go in at night because of the heat and their refugees and their location and its tent situation.
And they're in a country that's not their own.
And so we go there.
And I told the guys, you know, when we get up tomorrow morning, they're going to set places for us to eat in this other part of these massive tents.
And they'll just be us by ourselves because that's their custom.
They don't eat with their guests.
So their guests will eat as much as they want.
So get up the next morning.
We go in there to eat.
And there's three of us and there's four place settings set on the table where you sit on the floor, obviously.
And so my friend was like, why are they?
Why are there for?
Is one of them come in and eat with us?
Like, no, they won't come in until we're done.
I'm telling you.
And he's like, why is this?
I don't know.
I don't know.
Did they ever do this before?
No, but I don't know.
Who, no?
I don't know.
Stop bugging me about it.
Every meal was like that.
This extra place setting.
And he kept asking me because he was real interested in the detail.
He was a very detailed oriented person and he was very security conscious guy.
That was his expertise.
And so he wanted to understand why they were doing this.
And so I just kept saying, I don't know.
And we were in a meeting at night with the leaders, these Muslim leaders, and drinking tea with him.
And he said to me, I'm going to ask him about the place.
And I'm like, whatever.
So he's talking.
He says to him, you know, I'm just curious is what's the custom of why you set this extra place?
And they said, we don't have a custom that does that work.
He said, well, why are there four place settings every time we go into the meal?
He said, the guy's e-mom's like, because there's four of you guys.
Why wouldn't we quit?
And then, and so then the guy looks at me and he's like, there's four of us.
And then I kind of knew.
Yeah, I kind of knew because we had a similar experience before, something like that,
where someone, we were praying together.
And the person watching us saw one more person than what we had in the little group that was praying.
So it was interesting.
And so I said, ask him.
And so he said, what does the guy look like?
And they said, it's your security guy.
The guy that stands outside while you guys are sleeping, that guy, doesn't he eat?
What time?
Doesn't he come in and eat with you?
And so my friend says, what does he look like?
And they said, he looks like you.
He looks like you guys, but he's bigger than you.
And we want to ask you a question about him because we're curious, like, why does he have a sword?
Why does a security guy actually have a sword?
They thought it was super impressive that he had a sword.
And so then, you know, then I was like, oh, my gosh.
And my friend kept going, he looks at me, he goes, he's got a security guy.
He's got a sword like that.
And they said, the Muslims were like, you can't see him, can you?
They realized you can't see him, can you?
And the guy's like, no.
And they said, oh, it's Malay Allah.
It's an angel of God.
It's protecting you.
and that when we walked around the camp,
there was this fourth person that was always with us
that they just assumed was our security guy.
But when they figured out that we couldn't see them,
then it really went like wildfire through the place
because it was a violent, it was a tough situation,
and there was a lot of threats against us being there.
And we were totally isolated and unarmed.
And so that was, you know, that was the thing that kept everyone like,
wow, these guys, that God's protecting these guys.
So we need to like, first of all, leave him alone and second, pay attention to what they're saying.
That guy that was, you know, they kept asking about the angel.
He became sort of the main guy to lead their most militant leader to faith.
It was because of him.
Wow.
What does something like that do?
I mean, one, I love that going back to the narrative, if you ask a Muslim, like, oh, there's an angel with me.
Like, of course.
Like, you know, like, it's like, you know, where's so I tell one of my friends, they're like, sure.
Sure.
there is.
Right. I know. It's sad.
But you experience something like that.
How do you wrestle with that, like, dissonance of, because I'm sure you know lots of people
who've been killed or their mission was not a successful?
And then you're like, God, like, you blessed me with like a personal executive protection
detail in this mission. And yet, obviously, even as we speak right now, there are Christians
just being, you know, marty all over the world.
Absolutely.
So does that, do you just have to say, you know, Lord, I just, I trust you and I don't know what's
going on there?
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, and again, I think it's like, you know, when, you know, when Peter gets released from prison, you know, the angel opens up the jail cell and they leave. I mean, what happened to those guards? They were probably executed, you know, like, so Peter gets spared and these poor guys get killed because the angel let him out. And then the time when Paul, you know, opens and he doesn't want to leave because he doesn't want the guards to get hurt. Like those are interesting stories about how this stuff goes.
For me, it's like, I think it's like if the goal is to not die, then one story is better than
another, right?
If the goal is whatever you do, don't die, then to be protected by an angel for, you know,
25 more years of your life is like, that's a big win.
But for the person that gets killed, well, like, then, yeah, but what, did they lose?
Like, that's the problem.
It's like one's more than the other.
Like, well, he's, he spared you.
but this is where I just think we have completely the wrong view of death,
is that death is the, it means you didn't make it.
Like it didn't work.
And so even with that three-man team who I went, you know,
we did another thing together.
We always talked about because we did a hard, hard stuff together,
that particular group team.
And we always had a lot of opposition and death threats when we were doing stuff.
And our thing was, if you see Jesus, it's over.
That was our thing.
And so when Stephen sees Jesus,
he's not like, oh, shoot, darn it.
You're not going to protect me.
Like, you know, I'm going to die here.
It's like he sees Jesus standing up, and it's like the greatest thing he's ever experienced.
And so our thing was like, if you see Jesus, this is going to be the greatest thing that ever happened to us.
But if we don't see Jesus, this is going to really hurt, potentially.
That's how we looked at it.
And it's interesting, too, because so many of your stories, right, and I've teased the audience enough with this, too,
but it's like you are out there in faith.
And I do think every single person I've had on this show says,
you know what?
You see deliverance when you're out there doing it.
You see miracles when you're out there on the front lines.
And when you need,
when you build in space for God to show up,
that's when he does.
And I know so many of us,
myself included,
kind of live a life to kind of,
because to need God means I'm probably in a tough spot.
And so there's a,
there's a tension there.
But,
I mean,
you follow this Holy Spirit advice until you had,
I don't know if it was your idea,
the Lord's idea,
is, hey, why don't you bring five, you know, militants to a Texas camp?
Of course, Texas is the, is the perfect place to do that.
But maybe you could give us the, I know it's a longer, so maybe the abbreviated version
of this story because I often think about my next men's retreat and how the program,
I would love to list that on the sessions.
Well, I'll tell you what's funny is we're getting ready to do a thing in Texas coming up.
And because of that story, the men, whoever doing this thing,
have already invited the Muslims in their community to come because of that story.
That's what you want.
That's what you want.
But so that was just we were living in Israel.
We were living in Jerusalem and working in the West Bank as well as Israel.
And it's so tense there all the time and just such hostility back and forth and between groups.
And so we were just asking the Lord, like, can we do?
What can we do?
What can we do?
I mean, we're not, this hostility is not going to go away.
And there's too many people that's supported.
the hostility. I mean, there's so many factions that want it to be hostile.
And so what can we do to like bring parties together? And we just had this idea that what if
we just bring five leaders, Muslim leaders who are very hostile towards Israel and the U.S.
What if we got them to come to a men's retreat so that they could see the men at the men's retreat
and the men at the men at the men's retreat could see them? They were actually beat together.
in one place to humanize and, you know, and stop reading books about each other and all that.
And so when I went around and asked the parties involved, the church people, no, they said, no,
we don't want that.
The Israelis, can I take these guys out?
No, you're not allowed to do that.
The Americans, can you give me visas to do?
No, no, no, no, no, no.
Everyone's opposed to it.
And so what are we going to do?
Like, no one wants people.
people say we want peace, but then we could have humans can do anything with God.
We can figure out peace. Of course we can. And so we have the Prince of Peace guiding us in this.
And so anyway, so then I just said, we just asked the Lord like, what would you do?
And how would we work this out? And so we just went to, they're afraid, they're afraid, they're afraid.
They're all afraid of each other. How do we take away the fear? What are you afraid of?
Okay, we're going to work on taking away that fear. What are you afraid of?
And so we just kept working and we wouldn't stop.
because people were afraid and said, no, we just assumed that's going to happen. Yeah, that's what
everyone does. And so, you know, then we got the church leaders to agree to let them come, welcome
them, got the Americans to say, well, if you could get them to the counselor agent office, we'll
give them permission, but you're never going to get it. So we can say that because you're
never going to get them into Israel. And then just, okay, how do we get the Israelis to let them
come get to the American counselor to get a visa? And, you know, it took an Israeli,
guy to do it, and which was so beautiful because then the Israelis became the ones that helped
them get to the American place. And then the Americans were like, how did you guys get here with
the Israelis? And so it was like doing, it's just bringing the people together like this.
It's so, we have never ever seen in all of our years a Palestinian Muslim meet Jesus that
in the process, God didn't use some Israeli as a key component. Because it's always involves
reconciliation. And so it wasn't like they're like, oh, we believe in Jesus now and now we're at peace
with everyone. It has to be way more than that. One time we were taking this young Palestinian, he's
very close to just embracing Jesus. He's very close to it. And he said, can you get me? Can I go
pray in the mosque and Aloxa? And I'm like, dude, you got to have a permit to go. It's like,
I mean, we can try. We did this a few times. And I said, let's go as far as we can go and see if God
opens the door. And so we just started heading in that direction and they let us through the border
crossing. He just showed him as they're like, okay, but, and then we get all the way to the,
the gate to go up to the mosque and I go through the gate and they let me through and he comes
and this policeman grabs him and says, where are you going? They speak Hebrew, you know, and the
Palestinian has to speak Hebrew too. And he's saying in Hebrew is like, well, my friend wants to see
the mosque and I just want to go with him. I've never been. And he's holding him. And I come back and
they're like, you're not, this guy ain't going up there. You know, we don't know who you. He's West Bank.
And I just, I just said out loud, I just said in the name of Jesus, God, can you just let him come?
And the guy, I don't know. The guy just let said, well, you know, all right, maybe this one time.
We've been in situations where they, where we've been told absolutely not by visa officials in
countries. No, we've waited two hours and gone right back to the same person and they let us in.
It's like God's capacity to change a heart. And so when that policeman let him into the mosque like
that, it meant to him not everyone's your enemy. Yeah, of course. And so for him to grab him and
hold him for a minute and then release him, God was saying, I can overcome this. I can over. But you've got to be
willing to come to where they are, to where the Israelis are.
And so in that story, yeah, to be able to bring them and then bring them to the,
when they got to the retreat and for them to see that Jesus spoke to them there.
Like that was, Jesus speaking to them at night at the retreat in their bunk houses with all
these Texans was moving to both the Christians and the Muslims because the Christians
are like, how come Jesus is talking to them and not us?
and the Muslims are like,
how come Jesus is talking to us in a room full of our enemies?
Well, because they came to the guys and said,
hey,
guys,
FYI,
Jesus came to us in a dream last night and now we want to be Christians,
right?
Yeah.
All because,
and it's just getting them in that proximity.
And it's so funny, too,
because Jesus always tends to show up to the people.
You're like,
wait,
you're not going to show up to me.
It's like,
you showed up to Saul,
the guy murdering all the Christians and said,
no, you're going to be my guy.
And so how humbling.
And actually,
I think in that story,
too,
mention those guys were so, they wanted to start making YouTube videos right away and say,
yeah, one of the one he did, he got baptized on YouTube, which was in cost him a lot of trouble,
but he insisted on doing it. And then the next year, those same guys came back with more Muslims
and their wives. So we had to do a women's retreat the next year in Texas. So the church
community really began to embrace them. And so then we brought, we brought Muslims from Europe.
And then the American embassy in Europe was called to me and said, what do you, what do you, why are you bringing these Algerians out of Paris? Why do you want visas for them? And I wouldn't, I wouldn't tell them because I knew they would shut me down. And they kept, they kept, they were just a cultural exchange. They're like, no, no, no, no, no, what are you doing with these guys? What if we give them, we want to know what exactly you're doing. And then finally the Lord said, tell, tell them. Like, don't hide what you're doing. Tell them. And so I told the American person, I said, look,
we did this before these guys came to faith in Jesus.
You can shut it down, but this is what we're doing.
And the embassy people, American, said,
can you come to Paris?
And they went to Paris and met with them.
And they said, tell us how to do what you're doing
because we don't know how to work with the Muslims here.
Wow.
See, and it's all that, see, that's fear, that separation thing,
I didn't want to tell them.
Like, I wanted to, like, no, but God's like, no, we're,
and then those the people that worked in the embassy one of them said look I got a son I got a son in the US that's really struggling would you mind going and seeing him and I'm like yes and they gave us the visas you know I mean it was just all of us God's just reconnecting all these warring parties that are self-protecting and self-promoting because we're all afraid of each other wow and then a beautiful moment from that story too is could you describe I I really my heart was breaking as you talked about how they
were like never seen a body of water and you took them to Galveston which is not high on my list
of tourist destinations but you're watching them in the water just like little kids like seeing the ocean
for the first time and I just I want people to know that too because regardless of your views or
stance or theology and all this like there are just so many people suffering and I'm just can you
imagine like I'm living California the beach is 20 minutes from my house and I'm just like these people
rejoicing that they got out you know yeah it's hard to I know it's hard to understand it's like
They've, they've, you know, they, those guys, those particular guys have never really left the town that they, it's not even where they were born.
They've never even been back to where they were born, but they've never left the town that they're living in currently because they just can't because of the restrictions and the war and all that stuff.
And, and so for them to get out, they lived 10 miles from Jerusalem had never seen it.
Can you imagine?
They were walking distance to Jerusalem.
had never been there.
And so when they got to, you know, when they got to go see Jerusalem.
And I mean, to them, it was just so moving to them.
And they'd never been in an airplane.
You know, when they were looking down at the earth, I remember we were flying over Iran.
And they were looking out the window at the lights.
And they were like, they just kept going, Malikut Allah, which is kingdom of God.
This is the kingdom of God.
Like it's all of us on this little.
Wow.
You know, and then, and then, yeah, when we got there, they, they, two things happened.
One is they, they were talking about how they had a little kitchen in their school,
but they couldn't really make any food because they didn't have an oven.
And they were just talking about it together.
And some guy at the retreat went, went to his truck and brought a suitcase that had $10,000
in cash and showed it to me because I'm giving it to these guys.
And I'm like, no, you're not.
No, you're not handing them $10,000 in cash.
But you can give it to us and we'll make sure.
kitchen gets me. That's how fast the Christians loved them. Once they were together, and so anyway,
and then so I took them down to Galveston, and yeah, they were so, you know, obviously they don't
wear shorts or anything. So they roll up their pan legs. And one of them, two, one was a superintendent
of schools and one was a principal of a school. I took them into a middle school in Houston that
had interactive whiteboards. They stood there and quept at what is available to middle school kids.
I mean, they cried.
And another experiences there, the kids who were a gifted class asked him to go up to the board
and show them their country on their map.
And he went up to the map, and Palestine wasn't on the map.
Wow.
And he's like, way, he goes, my country's not on your map.
And the teacher was so embarrassed.
And the kids, especially the ethnic kids were like, why isn't his country on the map?
Who took his country off the map?
I mean, this is the things that we never think about.
Wow, that is crazy.
Wow, that's beautiful.
I know we're in a long time here.
I want to finish with this because I think you would appreciate,
I actually just get your reaction on this.
So Father Martin's in his exorcism process asked three questions,
or so he commands of the demons when he casts,
when he's working on a significant case.
And it's really interesting.
I thought you might appreciate this.
One, which is he tries to get.
at the name of the demon because these demons in perpetuity oftentimes will identify themselves either
by a lie or by a name of a sin or a vice. So they are literally full on embracing their demonic,
you know, identity. He will ask for what purpose did God originally create you? And who is your
nemesis? To the demon? Yeah. Yeah. Wow. And then who is your nemesis in heaven with the idea that just in
his experience, he has found that demons have unique rate.
Like, they hate everybody.
They hate all of God's creation, but they have this unique, um, just disdain and rage for
like specific individuals who like showcased a virtue or something that they lacked or
whatever.
But I thought in particular, the name was so interesting because oftentimes they will
present themselves and identify by the sin.
They will also, in a lot of the course of many of the cases, they will constantly throw debasing
comments and derog, like the most horrible thing.
about the person being, and these are, of course, extreme examples.
But in the throes of manifestations, people are,
the demons are constantly calling the humans animals.
They're trying to make them behave like snakes and pigs and just constantly trying to
like, you know, and also just throwing out lies about how, no, they want me there.
I have permission to be there, all stuff.
And then I also find interesting just father talking about there for what purpose, like you,
what did you forfeit?
What beautiful, like truth did you have that you traded for a lot?
lie. And he says, my job is to help someone see the truth in an exorcism. So I'm curious how much
that lines up with some of the principles of identity exchange. Oh, yeah, all of it. Yeah.
I mean, I'm not the expert at that like those guys are. Those guys are like super, they're like
the special forces of that kind of world. We're not that. So if we, if we've been in extreme
situations like that early on that we probably didn't handle well. So I'm, I'm, hats off to those guys
it, study it and really know what they're doing. Yeah, absolutely. In our limited experience with
that is, yeah, the whole lie-based component to it is so deep and so great. And even when we
have talked, you know, to the demonic, it's like, yeah, it's just the lying and deceiving
is so great. It's just so deep. And the only thing that counters it is right, is
the truth is, you know, the truth of God and the truth of the gospel and truth liberates,
right, and exposing the lie and exchanging it for the truth. Yeah, there's no other way through
it besides that. So yes, 100% that. They're just dealing with a lot more. If we,
if we ran into someone that's that extreme, we would probably call somebody, call one of those guys.
Who you can have? There's something strange in your neighborhood. I just think it's such thing because he's
going around trying to discover what doors have been opened. And in your case, you're doing
sort of a truth exercise. Like, hey, what lies have you believed? And in this case, these are just
lies or strongholds that have, you know, progressed to a degree where the person's freedom is so
compromised that they're actually losing agency and, um, et cetera. But, but it's interesting to see if we all,
I, you know, talking with you and father's a huge proponent of, um, therapy and just early on,
like, you know, that's why I love, even though not being Catholic, I deeply love the idea of,
of just like a regular practice of confession and just voicing stuff.
And it's,
and it's so funny too,
because I remember my physician even is a really,
is a friend and a really good guy.
And he goes, dude, he's like, men are the worst.
He's like,
I cannot get a guy to tell me everything like, you know,
like he's been having chest pains.
He won't tell me.
Like he's just,
it's so funny how we're so remiss to share any weakness or vulnerability.
And yet our very lives depend on it.
That's right.
Exactly. That's what we say all the time. It's not that people are liars. It's just they don't actually know what the truth is anymore. Yeah. Exactly right. Yeah. That's the deception level. Yeah. Jamie, what final practical advice you have for people as we wrap up to who want to start stepping out responsibly and hearing like saying, you know what? Yeah, I believe God speaks today. I'm not ready to go run off and start casting out of demons. But I'm like, you know what? I want to invite the Lord into, and it's, you know what, you're using. You know what? You're going to use. You
said something really profound. You know, Father Martin's always big on, hey, all Christians
have authority to tramp on snakes and scorpions, whether you should do it in any particular
instance is a matter of discernment and discretion. We have many stories that people who got routed
because God was not calling them into the battle. They, you know, decided to run headstrong into.
But for those who want to start just inviting the Holy Spirit into their profession, you know,
their teachers and lawyers and doctors, et cetera, like how would you, you know, how would you
encourage them to say, hey, start carving out space for the, like, you know,
Spirit. Yeah. Well, first of all, I would just say to people, a couple of guys I've been working with
lately, they call it think time. It's just, before they really encounter Jesus and all, they had this
practice of like just writing down issues they're dealing with and just think about them. Think time.
And so what they've done now, you know, once they understand identity and hearing from God,
they just take time and they're specifically about vocations. It's like, Lord, you know,
once I understand my own identity, everything, in that, and the truth.
of my identity, what do you want me to know? What are things I should think about, about my class
or my job or my whatever that I don't know? Like, what are things that I wouldn't know to ask you
about? Or I wouldn't know to think about. And just practice writing down ideas. And some of them,
some of them will really stick, but just the practice of listening like that and not dismissing
things, but just let them come and learn, you'll learn how where the Lord is really actually
talking to you, and you're just fine-tuning that in. And then you just start, just because I promise
you, he's a God of process, and there's nowhere in Bible where he just takes someone to throws him
into the worst-case scenario like you're saying. That's crazy. That's, I warranted.
people don't do that. Wait for the Lord to, he says, follow me, follow me. Like, stay with him. He'll walk
you through it gradually into, you know, the bigger and bigger things. He'll go as far as you want to go.
Let me tell you that. He will, you want to go higher. He'll take you higher. Just don't get ahead of
them. But just that practice of like listening, ask him about your vocation, ask him about
your partner, ask him about just questions like that and practice writing down what comes to your
mind, what you sense from the Lord, and how you're sensing it. Is it a feeling? Is it images? Is it
movies? Is it ideas, pictures? Keep track of how he's responding to you and learn to learn.
Because in those quiet times of really fine-tuning that, then he'll start walking you out further
where it gets louder and a little more risky. It's not any more risky. That's the lie. It's not any more
risky. I tell people like if, I mean, I live in Tennessee, it takes just as much faith to hear the
Lord and act here as it doesn't back that. It's no different. That's another lie. The one place is like,
oh, you're so brave. It's not, that's not true. I was invited there by God. It was joy to go.
If I wasn't invited, I wouldn't go. If he doesn't invite you, don't go. Don't wish you could go.
Don't want to go. He'll invite you. Don't worry. So it doesn't take any greater faith to be there than
here. I think it's probably the opposite. I think it's harder to be here.
But and just practicing that listening and writing down ideas and then just start to act on them.
Just we had a lady, one of our teaching pastors here, a woman, she just was practicing this and she just felt like the Lord said, go downtown by the library and buy them hamburgers.
And she just went and did it.
Well, I mean, one of the guys there, he's now like, he's a heroin guy, heroin addict, four years heroin addict living in a trap house.
And he's the first guy that came to faith out of her doing that.
And he's a greeter at our church now.
he's got a place, he's reunited with his family, because she heard go buy hamburgers down there.
Like just that little thing in our town where we have, we don't have very many homeless people,
but she just went down there and did it.
And he's the one that just immediately came up to her and stood out to her.
And she's like, and then she just followed it along, you know, like that simple.
Notice the Lord did not say, go and buy him tofu, right?
That's right.
They wouldn't have responded.
That's right.
You got us a partner with the Lord.
That's amazing.
He knows what they like.
Well, thank you so much, Jamie.
We really appreciate your time and your inspiring story.
And congratulations on the book.
We will link to that in there.
Anything you want to plug before I or make sure to link to or whatever?
No, I love the stuff you're talking about.
It's good stuff.
Tell people to go to pay attention to movies.
That's right.
You know, it's funny.
I used to resist that.
And then I thought, you know what, God, I don't know if you're using that because you like that
or you're like, you know what?
That kid spent so much time.
Because people would always say that about me.
You have so many movie quotes memorized.
I'm like, no, I don't.
Like, yeah, you do.
And I'm like, man, I guess my mom's like, you loved movies as a kid and just
memorize stuff.
And I thought, well, all right, makes sense.
God's like, you know what?
You have an encyclopedic knowledge of useless 90s and 80s films at this point.
And I know.
There's a clue there.
Yeah, no, and it's funny.
And they will just come to mind in the weirdest.
And I'll get it like, why do I want?
Like, I remember one night, it was like, 2 a.m.
And I was like, God's like, watch Braveheart.
I feel like, I was like,
Of course, God's always telling you to watch pretty far.
That's the true question, right?
There's always watching that.
And I'm like, oh, man, Lord, that's a three-hour movie.
Like, like, what's, I hope it's an early scene, you know?
And it was.
And I remember just there was a scene that came on and all of a sudden I was just like,
and he's like, yep, that's, uh, that's going to be you.
And I was like, oh, and it just, and a lot of stuff came to pass.
And so, yeah, I know, man.
It's, it's wild stuff.
So anyways, but so, Jane, we so appreciate you being on the show.
Thanks for having me.
etc and god bless you and your work and uh check out identity exchange check out all his books
we'll link to them in there and you can watch them on just google jimmy winship and go to town guys
see what comes up thank you all
