Conflict Zones, the CIA, and Listening to God with Jamie Winship
During my sabbatical this summer, someone sent me three podcast episodes that Jamie Winship was in. Those episodes were some of the most transforming content I've ever heard. Jamie was sharing exactly what we all need to hear – the importance of trusting and listening to God.
Jamie went from joining the police force in Washington, DC to spending decades working in conflict zones across the globe. He is also the author of an amazing book about identity. In this first installment of our three-part series with Jamie, we get to know the man behind this incredible work.
Tell Us a Bit About Your Journey.
Jamie: When I was in 8th grade, I snuck into a local theatre to watch a movie. It was an academy award-winning movie about a New York City police officer. From that day, I knew I wanted to be a police officer. Something inside me just exploded when I watched that movie. I knew that I was being challenged, called, and named in the narrative of the movie. From that day forward, every decision I made was based on what I was supposed to be – a police officer. I was driven by this sense of being.
When I was 17, I had a wrestling injury that required knee surgery. I met this amazing nurse at the hospital, and she is the person who really walked me into faith in Christ. This incredible woman spent five days pouring into me. I recognized that she was more than just a nurse. She was bringing something to me that was deeper than her vocation. As I was going home from the hospital, I asked God to teach me how to be a police officer like she was a nurse.
I went to university, graduated, and then went into the police academy. At 23 years old, my dream had come true, and I was newly married. I realized very quickly that being a police officer was nothing like the movie. This is a very different dark world, and the men and women I worked with were just as broken and fractured as anyone we encountered on the street.
And so, I started to ask God if it was possible to learn another way of policing that wasn't taught in the academy. I kept a little notebook where I just started asking God questions. I would wait to see how He would answer and how I would know it.
I became astounded by how quickly and beautifully the Lord would work.
I realized that I'm in union, abiding in Christ. I started to bring my identity into my vocation, and that's how I got started on this whole journey.
The CIA tried to recruit you many times, but you felt pretty convicted about being a police officer. But then that shifted at some point. Talk about that transition. And what was the right change?
Jamie: My first interview with the CIA took place when I was 19. I went through the regular application process, and I zipped through it for some reason. They offered me a job after the interview, but I refused the offer. I told them I was not seeking a high position. Rather, I was seeking to be what I believe God wants me to be.
When I went into the police department, I started learning how to hear God, how God works, and how fast God answered prayers.
In my fifth year in the police department, I got a meeting request from an operations guy at the CIA. As he was flipping through a folder of cases I had worked through, he asked about my thought process. He asked if I could articulate the process.
I told him I would pray about any case I worked on. I would ask God, “What do you want me to know about this situation that I don't know yet?” Then I would listen and wait. I would then have ideas and write them down.
The CIA operations guy gave me a real-life scenario they were working on and asked what I would do. So, I leaned back and spoke to God. Then, I just waited for the ideas. Hearing from God is fixing your eyes on Jesus, asking him a question, and waiting for the answer. One of my questions was how fast Jesus could answer. And Jesus did answer.
I told the operations guy that their whole paradigm was wrong from the beginning. I told him I would get rid of this paradigm and build a new one. I told him what I would do. Immediately afterwards, he wrote a figure on a napkin, slid it across, and said I was hired. That was how they offered me a job. Because I did not want a direct affiliation with a government agency, I built a team of my own and we essentially worked as independent contractors of sorts.
One of the things you often talk about is identity. Can we talk about your definition of identity?
Jamie: I think of a calling as doing and identity as being. Being always precedes and informs doing. Jesus says a good tree produces good fruit. So, the ontology of the tree is goodness, meaning it produces good fruit. If the ontology or the essence of the tree is evil, it can only produce bad fruit. We tend to concentrate too much on the fruit.
If you don't understand who God is, you'll never understand what He does or why it's done.
Scripture tells us that the identity of God is love. So, everything that comes out of God and His calling in the world comes from the being of love.
When we watch Jesus as the exact representation of the invisible God, we know that He has come out of love. When Jesus was baptized, He was commissioned into ministry, receiving His identity from God. The vocation of this Being is Messiah; it’s the Lamb of God. The vocation is to take away sin in the world. So, being a police officer is my calling and vocation, but my identity precedes it.
Linking identity to vocation is what destroys good people, especially in the police and Special Forces. You must remember that the calling wasn't there before your identity. The identity is what got God knit together in your mother's womb, and that identity will move towards specific callings because of who you are.
Somebody reading this may not know their identity. They may be wondering what it looks like for them because they've never had God tell them that. What prayer would you recommend?
Spend some time in quiet.
Just ask the Lord: “What do you call me when you talk about me? What do you say about me? If you were to wake me up in the middle of the night, what name would you call out that's different from anyone else you've ever made?”
This was only a snippet of Jennie’s chat with Jamie Winship. You can listen to the full podcast episode right here. He shares the most amazing story about how his son found identity in skateboarding for Jesus; you don’t want to miss it! This is part one of our three-part series with this Washington, DC native. Be on the lookout for more of Jennie’s chats with him.
