422 | FROM THE VAULT: False Identity, De-Escalation, and the Dad Wisdom You Didn't Know You Needed (Jamie Winship PART 2)
Episode Description
What if the biggest thing holding you back as a dad isn't your circumstances — it's what you believe about yourself? In this episode, Jamie Winship picks up right where we left off in Part 1, sharing jaw-dropping stories from being abducted in Iraq with his family, and unpacking the dad wisdom buried inside those moments. You'll learn why staying calm, staying present, and refusing to jump into drama can change everything in your home. Plus, Jamie walks through how to identify the false beliefs that are quietly running your life — and how to exchange them for who God actually made you to be.
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Jamie Winship is a former police officer turned international peacemaker who has spent decades bringing identity-based conflict resolution to some of the world's most dangerous places. He and his wife, Donna, have three sons and have lived and served in conflict zones including Indonesia and Baghdad. Jamie is the author of Living Fearless and teaches globally on identity, courage, and hearing God's voice. This is the most downloaded DadAwesome episode of all time — pulled from the vault and too good not to reshare.
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Give your spouse and your kids the gift of your true identity — it's the greatest thing you can offer your family.
The enemy lives in the hypothetical future. God is only present in the present tense. Stay there.
Don't participate in another person's drama. De-escalate, stay calm, and love the person in front of you.
You can't give away what you don't have. If you carry false beliefs about yourself, they will come out in your parenting.
Your true identity from God is other-focused, self-emptying, and rooted in unconditional love — even for your enemies.
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This is part two of a conversation I had two years ago with Jamie Winship. So today this is from the vault, but it's never been re-released and this is the most downloaded, most viewed episode in the history of the world of DadAwesome. So thrilled that you guys are joining. Make sure you hop back to episode 421 to get the setup. And then today we're gonna go about another 25, 30 minutes into — man, our identity matters and there's so many miracle stories here and there's so much practical we can put into action. So Jamie Winship from Identity Exchange, his book Living Fearless will change your life. So if you're thinking which book, DadAwesome or Living Fearless, I'll recommend his book any day. No, I'm playing. I think you need both. I think you need both. Okay, let's jump in. Episode 422 with Jamie Winship.
[CONVERSATION]
Jamie Winship: Give your spouse and your kids the gift of your true identity. It's your gift to the world. And so for them, they would say — so what they watched as me and Donna moved into the truth of who we are, they would say that now. They saw a true identity. The truth of who we are is a risk. It causes you to be a risk taker. It makes you relational. I love this one — it makes you face reality. So when you face reality, the Indonesian situation said, "Well, we got to be realistic." Well, the realistic is that God can protect us in any scenario. That's what's realistic. What's not realistic is you got to protect yourself in every situation. That's how much upside down we are. "I love God, but to be real" — that's what people say. It drives me crazy when they say it. I said, "Okay, you just said what's real, now you're moving into what's not real in that statement."
And so, yeah, that's what they would watch — that shift — and they would see us take risks and they would see us be relational. And then they would see us be real. Like, yeah, the reality in this situation is — I mean, when we were in Iraq, me and Donna and our two sons got abducted. We got abducted by masked gunmen and I'm like, how many families get to be abducted together? Like, that's a family outing for you. And when we got abducted, we got stopped by these gunmen by the Euphrates River and they took me and my Iraqi friend in one vehicle with armed guys and the other armed guys got in our car with Donna and our sons. And Donna's like, "Don't let them separate us." I'm like, if I try and stop the separation, someone's going to get shot right now. At least if we just go with it and see what happens. You should hear our sons talk about that incident.
Jeff: Well, I want to hear about it right now. A little bit more right now. Like, how long were you apart from your family?
Jamie: So it was just me and my Iraqi driver, my friend Yusuf, and Donna and our two kids. We were driving around, and my Iraqi friend said, "Hey look, you're in Iraq, and it's a terrible situation. But for the first time we can drive across the bridges — only Saddam's relatives could ever cross the bridges, Tigris and Euphrates." And he said, "You have to — let's go see the Euphrates, because we can do it if we do it in the daylight and quick." So that sounded like a game.
We jump in the car and we're driving across and our son — our middle son who's now an FBI agent — he was leaning out the window of the car videoing as we crossed the bridge. Beautiful video. I mean, how many people get to do this? We get across over onto the other side and we're driving down the road and then in behind us comes these two trucks and, you know, it's the masked guys with AK-47s and we're like, "Uh-oh."
And one of them drives around in front of us and the other's behind us and they block us so we can't move. They jump out, they're screaming and yelling and waving their guns and everything. And so, you know, this is what I'm saying about the Lord's progression and how he teaches us things. Like, if this would have happened at another time in our life earlier, it would have been different. But there's this certain kind of thing, like, you know what? This is going to go the way it's going to go.
And so we can fight it, push back against it, but it's going to go the way it's going to go. And five of our team had already been killed since we had been there. So it was like real. That's the real part. But it's also real that God is still the one managing this whole thing. And so you just have this kind of calm. It's really interesting. And so they got me out of the car and they got Yusuf out of the car and they're screaming and yelling at us. And we're just deescalating, you know — we're not going to match drama for drama. That's the worst thing. We're just deescalating.
And Donna's in the car and two guys are leaning in the back with our kids and her. And she's just yelling to me, "Don't let them separate us!" And that's what I said — like, I don't think I'm going to have a choice in this situation because we had been arrested before where they didn't separate. Like, this is a history of us.
And so they separate us and I'm with the guys and I have to go get in the car with them and I'm like, okay, this is about — you have to stay in the present tense, right? That's the whole thing. Don't get 30 seconds ahead into the unknown future, because that's where the enemy is. The enemy is always in the hypothetical. He's not in the truth. He's in the hypothetical and most of us live in the hypothetical. That's why we self-protect.
And I'm just staying, "Okay, we're okay. We're okay right now. No one's hurt. No shots have been fired. They haven't hit anybody. They're mad about whatever. So let's just go with it." And really honestly, to live is Christ and to die is gain. That's what it says. Do we believe this stuff or not? And so it's just that kind of calm and it's a discipline though — you learn how to do it.
And so Donna was in the other car and she was just singing praise songs. And our kids were teasing her about it while they're in the car with the gunmen. They're teasing her about the song she's singing. You know why? Because they grew up with joy. They know how to do it. And they knew it would help her. This 17 and 14-year-old teasing her like this doesn't even exist. What exists is our relationship. And we care about how you feel and they're teasing her about it like that.
And so then we're driving and then they go underneath a bridge. And then I was like, no, this doesn't look good. They drove up underneath the bridge and I was like, okay, all right, still okay. The other vehicle came — they didn't separate us, like go different places. They took us to the same place. Good, all positive, that's great.
And then they came and they wanted our son's video camera, so they grabbed it. And then they took the Iraqi — my Iraqi friend — they took him and they left me. And then they came back and got me and brought me into this little trailer mobile office thing under the bridge.
And so I go in there and they left them in the car and I'm like, this still is not an execution scenario now. It's just different. This is some kind of interrogation or something. And so they watched the video. They were watching the video and they were saying to me, "Why are you videotaping this site?" Because they thought we were intelligence people that were going to blow up the bridge. They thought we were collecting information.
Which is not unusual in how it works over there. Kids are often a part of it. So they're watching the video to see what we were documenting and then — this is the craziest part — they start laughing their heads off watching the video. And I'm like, I don't even know what's on the video. And then they say, "What is this?" They're laughing like, "What is this?" And I'm like, I don't know.
And they show it to me and it's a video of our two kids making a WWE wrestling movie in their bedroom. And they've got on these wrestling outfits and they're jumping across the bed and videoing each other and tackling each other. And I said, "That's my two sons. They're making a movie about something." And then everyone laughed. And they gave me the camera back and they let us go.
Jeff: Jamie, your storytelling — I could just ask story after story. But you're mentioning transferable wisdom — that's wisdom for all of us dads right now. One of them was there was a calmness. And if I could just be a dad who's calm — massive, massive advantage to bringing a loving culture to our home. The second thing you mentioned was de-escalation. I could just be a dad who brings emotions down, brings fear down. And then the third thing you mentioned is staying in the present moment. Could you pick any one you want and just go a little further into dad wisdom around those principles?
Jamie: Right, okay. So the de-escalation and the calm. When you watch Jesus, Jesus — as they say — never runs anywhere. He's never in a hurry, he's never freaked out, he's not dramatic. He's intense, like when he throws over the tables, but it's so tactically smart what he's doing. It's so well thought out — he's not just dramatically reacting to drama.
So never participate. The enemy loves drama. The enemy loves drama because drama goes out of control. And so one of my — it was a police guy that trained me — he used to say to me, "Do not participate in another person's drama. Don't participate in their drama. Stay back from it. Don't jump in the pool to save the drowning person. They'll drown you too. If you jump into their drama, you're both going to die."
Throw them a life raft. Stay back, stay calm, throw them a life preserver. That's what you do in a conversation. I'm not coming into that drama. And I even will say it to people — I'm not going to participate in this drama. I'll help you, but I'm not participating in the drama. So that's super important and that's a discipline too, because if I'm responsible for how everything happens, then you're going to be in the drama, but I'm not.
So staying in the present tense keeps you — because God is only present in the present tense, you know that saying? The enemy is present in the hypothetical future. That's where the enemy lives. So like, for example, "God, do you want us to stay in Indonesia?" Well, if I start imagining scenarios of our house being burnt down — you're not going to stay. But God's not showing me that picture. He's in the present tense.
And he deals in the present tense. So the more you just stay present, don't jump into the future. If you're going to think about the future, pray about the future from the peace of the present tense. Don't pray from the drama of the hypothetical future. Stay in the present, pray about the future.
And then the other thing I didn't say for this situation is — the guys that are accosting us are afraid. They're afraid. Anytime I'm in a confrontation where someone's threatening me, it's because they're afraid. Our goal to de-escalate — take away their fear. How do you take away another person's fear? Love them. Love your enemy. So how do you do that in a situation? You respect them.
"I'm going to kill you" and all this stuff — you just don't react like that. Just, okay, this guy's afraid of us. These guys are — we scared them somehow. What are they afraid of? Hamas is afraid of Israel. Israel is afraid of Hamas. Nobody's moving to take away that fear. It's all just fear on fear, which creates conflict. It'll never end. So love — teaching your kids how to love their enemy — that's the challenge.
[MID-ROLL]
Jeff: Just a quick pause from today's conversation with Jamie Winship to tell you about two things. Our DadAwesome Accelerator Coaching cohort — we just graduated our 11th cohort and we take about 10 dads at a time through the six core discoveries of DadAwesome. It's a six-week sprint. Everything we've learned in these eight-plus years of DadAwesome — with homework, with accountability, with praying for one another, with hearing each other's stories. And this experience — we now have a hundred graduates. It is so valuable and I'd love for you to check out dadawesome.org/coaching and apply to be a part of our group launching in late March. Also, the book is launching March 17th. And if you're not on the advanced team but would still like an early copy, I can send you a digital copy of the book so that you can write a review and help us on launch day on March 17th. So go to dadawesome.org/book to be a part of the advanced team. Now let's jump right back into the conversation.
[CONVERSATION CONTINUES]
Jeff: Jamie, none of this, I don't think, is possible if we have a false view of ourselves, a false identity. I just don't think it's possible because we're still talking about in that story — those scenarios — the calmness, the staying present, the de-escalation. If I have an inner turmoil of just like, I don't understand who God's made me to be. If I'm living as someone who is afraid or feels like a failure or knows that I have to earn love — it's not freely given, I got to earn it. Whatever that false identity — what are some signals to me right now and to the other dads listening that I might have a false identity? I might be believing a false identity. What are some signals? How would I know if I'm believing a false identity?
Jamie: Well, one — anxiety, for sure. Anxiety, fear, conflict. You're in constant conflict, either inside yourself or with people around you. There's just never-ending conflict. Those are the signs of the false self. It's self-protection, self-promotion. Separation is a sign of the false self. The false self will always move in separation, never in connection with others. It'll constantly separate out.
And so that's the verse — the soul that sins, the soul that separates, it will die. That's what that is — it's not about you did a bad thing and God's going to kill you. It's like, human beings were made to live in connection with others and God. And when we separate, it basically destroys us. That's what's happening in the world to us.
So those are the signs of the false self. But deeper than that, this is the exercise I would suggest — just sit alone with God and ask, and just breathe and relax and try and settle down and just say, "God, search me right now. Search me right now. And would you help me to be able to say the things that I believe about myself that hurt me?"
What are the things I believe about myself that hurt me? And just let them come to your mind. Mine are always, "I'm a disappointment." That's my big one — I'm a disappointment. And I can feel myself whenever someone wants to come and say, "Hey Jamie, can we talk about how you did this?" — I can feel that "I'm a disappointment" go boom. It's so drilled into me by my mom. And she was doing it because she loved me.
You know, if I didn't want to go to church or something, she would say, "Well, I think God's disappointed in you." That's a killer for a kid — to be told that they're a disappointment, because it's an identity that they start to receive. And I did. So then every success I had after that wasn't healthy. It was to prove I'm not a disappointment. And so the success didn't help. It actually made me feel more like I was a disappointment.
That's the exercise — if you're experiencing conflict and anxiety and inner conflict, stop and say, "Okay, what am I afraid of? Lord, what are names that I believe about myself that hurt me?" And then you can even ask — because they're all learned names. You weren't born believing them. I wasn't born thinking I was a disappointment. I learned that I was. I wasn't born thinking I was a failure. I saw my grades and realized I was a failure.
It's these places where, as kids are developing, they start to realize, "Wow, I'm ugly." They never knew that. But once they know it, every time they look in the mirror, they see it. That's the power of the lie. So we have to untangle that.
Jeff: And those lies — those believed truths that hurt us — that are not truths from heaven, they're lies from the enemy, that came through relationships, a lot of them through a parent — we have a choice to either press in to those areas and experience the truth, or we could cope, we can numb. Which is maybe where most of us dads listening right now are choosing that path versus the path of experiencing the truth and walking in our true identity.
Jamie: 100%. We all develop coping mechanisms, especially when you're young and you don't understand everything that's happening to you, so you have to develop coping mechanisms to deal with the pain of what you're finding out about yourself, even though it's false.
And so, okay — if I realize I'm not smart, like if I all of a sudden go, "Oh my gosh, I'm not as smart as these other people in this class" — you only have two options. Either you just quit, which a lot of kids do, or you might turn into the best student that ever lived. Both are deadly. Either one is deadly. Instead of like — I'm not as smart as these people in certain things, but I have a unique identity, unmatched in the world. And the goal of my education and vocation and Bible study and everything is to develop this identity to the highest level that I can in relationship to God. And let me tell you, you will never reach that level. It is so great and so beyond.
I love doing this with young people. We're meeting with a group of 20- to 30-year-olds right now. We've been with them six months. And all we've worked on is their view of God. That's all we've talked about. And it's dramatic what's happened to them.
So as a dad, you want your kids to have a right view of God, but you can't give away what you don't have. But what you do have, you will give away. And so if I'm a disappointment, it's going to come out. It comes out. I learned to be afraid of money. I learned to be terrified of money by laying in my bed at night when I was in elementary school, listening to my parents fight over money upstairs. I learned, "Wow, money is super powerful and it's mean, and we don't have it." So either I'm going to be poor my whole life or I'm going to spend the rest of my life not being poor. Both are deadly.
So for me as a parent, as a dad, I want to develop that wholeness and wellness in myself. What do I believe about myself that's false? "Jesus, I give that false belief to you. What do you say about me?" I was actually speaking about this at our church on Sunday — watching Moses go up to God and say, "This whole thing's falling apart. What do you say about me?" And God says to him, "You're my friend."
"You found favor" — the whole thing's burning down all around him. The people have invented another God. The whole thing's a disaster. He broke the clay tablets. People are dying and he's like, "I'm not moving unless you move." That's what he's saying. "I want to just be in your presence. Are you present in this? And if you are, what do you say about me?" And God says, "You're my friend. You find favor. I'm with you. I want you to go." And then Moses says, "Show me your glory then." And God does.
It's all about Moses and his identity with God, not about all the chaos. It's first this — just first him and God.
Jeff: Yes. And the first — the me and God — I think I have these notes, hopefully they're correct, correct me if I'm wrong — but the three areas that are always true in identity from God: that it's others-focused, that it's self-emptying, and the third is unconditional love for my enemies. Did I get that right?
Jamie: That's the model of Jesus. Again, I watched this be displayed by another human being that I got to work with, and it's other-focused, self-emptying, unconditional love for your enemy. And I would watch this person live it out with great skill. It's not like you're some weakling that goes in and you're a pacifist. I learned this from special forces people in an arena where it would look like this would never be effective, but it's the most effective thing. I was talking to one of them the other day — he just got promoted because of his skill at doing this overseas in the worst places.
But it's Philippians chapter two — it's Jesus. He didn't consider heaven something to be held onto for himself, but emptied himself and submitted himself unto death, even death of the cross. For who? For people that were hostile towards him. I mean, it's a high bar. It is a very high bar, but it is the bar.
And so if I'm going to live — we say we want to be Christlike, and I think, do we really? That's another thing I think with our kids — we have to be careful not to use platitudes with them, but really to say, "Look, this is the goal and it's a journey and we fail, but God is always with us, God is for us. But the goal is to be other-focused in life. The goal is to be self-emptying so that I'm not building my own empire. And to have unconditional love for the ones that seem hostile towards us in whatever way, in whatever scenario."
And this is the life of Christ. One of the guys that I work with right now — he's working with Boko Haram in Somalia, the worst. And their lead guy now was a Boko Haram terrorist whose specialty was killing pregnant women. And our guy — who is a former NFL player, a big dude — one of his struggles is with anger in life. And he's had this beautiful identity transformation in himself and he's become the kind of guy that works with these young men.
So he gets assigned this guy who's horrible. And our coach starts meeting with him and it takes everything in a room with this guy to not just kill him — and just trying to love him and emptying himself of his own desire to jump into the drama and end this thing. And the guy came to faith. Why does he come to faith? Because the love of this other guy took away his fear of being powerless and alone. That's the fear of the terrorists — powerless and alone. That's their fear. And so when they realize, "Wow, you're not powerless and you're not alone," then there's no need to fight anymore.
So this guy has become an amazing weapon in the kingdom of God for reaching those kinds of people. And you can't do it if you're just out there to self-protect and self-promote.
Jeff: What did this lead you — where did God lead you? I know it's specific, not a broad statement, but it's specific for you. What is your true identity, Jamie?
Jamie: Yeah, my true identity is — I'm going to show you — this is a brass knot, a tied knot. And I have this because a person gave it to me because my identity is "untier of knots." So it's been a journey to come to this kind of specific understanding of who I am. It was like from "warrior" over years to "militant peacemaker" to "untier of knots." It's like general ed, then a master's, and now a PhD. It's so beautiful how God does this stuff.
And so that's what I do. Back to what I said earlier — the greatest gift I can give my own sons and their wives and my grandkids is to untie their knots. That's my greatest gift to them as a dad, father-in-law, grandparent. My greatest gift to my wife is to be the untier of her knots. See how simple that is? That is my gift to the world.
In my mother's womb, God made me an untier of knots. In Christ, I've discovered how to become who God made me to be at the highest level. And so now when I write a book, it's about untying. It involves untying. Everything I do involves untying knots. Even this conversation we're having — in my head, in my spirit — there's dads out there, there's people out there listening who are knotted up. We need to untie those. Just untie those knots.
Jeff: Jamie, this has been — I think — the 3% of the iceberg of what God has led for you and your wife in the work. We're a little bit of the 3%, there's the 97% that I'm going to send to your website, to the courses, your book, some of the coaching. So I'm going to make sure to send our DadAwesome community your way for more. And hopefully we'll get to have another conversation at some point to go into the many pages of questions that I didn't even ask you. But thank you for this time. Would you say a short prayer over all of us?
Jamie: Yeah. Lord, thank you for this time. Thank you for Jeff. Lord, thank you for each listener. Each listener is someone, Lord, that you knit together in their mother's womb — unique, one of a kind. You've never made anyone like them and you never will again. And so Lord, Jeff and I both — bless these listeners to discover who they really are in relationship to who you really are, Lord. I pray for freedom for them. I pray that they would move into a relationship with Christ that's an exchange of shame for beauty, that's false for true. And we know that to know and experience truth is to be free — is to understand freedom. I pray that blessing on all the listeners, and that they would, Lord — that if any of them went to you and said, "How do you see me as a parent or a human?" — what you would say is that you're proud of them. No matter what they're doing, you're proud of who they really are. And your challenge might be, "Let's live out who you really are. Let's stop living out the false." But you love them and you care about them. So Lord, may they receive these truths and be blessed by you in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
[OUTRO]
Jeff: Thank you so much for joining us for episode 422. All the conversation links, the transcript, the action steps, the key quotes — that's all going to be found at dadawesome.org/podcast, and just look for episode 422. Guys, thanks for listening. And as you heard earlier, our Accelerator cohort applications are open now — a six-week sprint of all things DadAwesome: homework, accountability, coaching, encouragement. So go to dadawesome.org/coaching for that resource. And lastly, the book is coming out soon — March 17th. So keep that on your radar. We'd love to invite our whole community to build towards the launch of this book so it reaches as many dads as possible. More information coming soon, but you can still get a PDF and early digital copy at dadawesome.org/book. Okay, that's it for links and resources. Thank you for being DadAwesome. I'm praying for you guys, cheering for you this week.
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"You want your kids to have a right view of God, but you can't give away what you don't have."
"Do not participate in another person's drama. Stay back from it. Stay calm."
"God is only present in the present tense. The enemy is present in the hypothetical future."
"The greatest gift I can give my sons is to untie their knots."
"A child's false identity — once they believe it, they see it every time."
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