Jamie Winship | The Connection Worldview

No matter how deep you get in here, he will keep pursuing you. You will separate; he will never separate. He can't separate. Why? He's, he's omnipresent. There's nowhere you can go where he isn't with you.

And I'm saying to myself, "I have to battle this worldview every single day." Every single day. If, if I didn't believe in this, who knows what you would do. What? Genesis chapter 1. Though Moses is like, "But good news, life! You don't get your identity from what you produce in the marketplace." That's what he's telling the Israelites. "You don't get your identity from what you produce in the marketplace." Which is exactly what we tell our kids all the time. "You do get your identity from what you produce in the marketplace. That's the only place you get identity." So the marketplace determines whether we have value or not. We're not just valued on our own. "What can you produce?" "I can walk into a religious group and like, do I come in with value on my own?" "I don't know. What are you bringing to us? What are you going to produce for us at the church?" "CU we want people that can produce. Doesn't God want people that can produce fruit?" "Well, I don't really know what to do." "Well, then you're not going to be as valued here as everybody else because we got some high producers in here. We got some significant influencers in here." So this is the goal: "Where are you on that measurement spectrum?" And we can't figure out why people don't come anymore. We think, "What? Is it the music? Is it the preaching? It's this, it's this, it's the constant measurement. It's the constant."

In this system, it, it's only a matter of time. If there's not enough money, and not enough food, and not enough land, and not enough love, and not enough good conservatives like me, and there's not enough, if there's not enough of those, eventually it counts down to, "I'm not enough. I am not enough." And that is where we struggle so deeply, and it produces such anxiety in us because it's not true. None of this is even true in reality. This whole thing is false. And the only thing that keeps us, keeps this system going, is us saying it's true.

Gideon is a mighty man of valor. If you know that story, he's been a mighty man of valor since the day he came into the world. He comes into the world, he's taught something about his tribe: "Your tribe is weak, young." He learns this. "Oh, okay. We're weak. What is strong look like?" "Those guys over there." "Oh, I'm not that. So you're not a strong man. You're not a real man if you were, you'd look like that over there. You don't. And you're the youngest. And that's a bummer. And all that stuff." And watch, watch what happens. The Midianites just come in and they just take everything right from us. They do it every year. So there's not enough for us. We're certain there's no way out of this thing. So we, perfection, I don't even know. But we got to just protect ourselves. And so they all, so here's what we're going to do, Gideon. We're going to teach you how to hide in a cave the rest of your life. You're not going to win out there. Just hide in a cave. You can call it your den, you can call it your man cave, you can call it a church, whatever it is. Get in it and stay in it and let this thing go to hell. That's the strategy of this worldview.

And so Gideon's like, "No other examples of anything different than that." Okay, I receive this worldview. And he gets in there. The thing is, he's still a mighty man of valor. And he's still not in a scarcity world. And he's not weak. None of that's true. But he thinks it's true. True. So he lives like it's true. And then life confirms it. "Yep, yep. That's exactly like they said." "Yep. I tell him what tribe I'm from." "They go, 'Wow, you're that weak little tribe over there?'" "Yep." "See? Wow, that was right. They're true. That's exactly right. Huh. We're never going to win this thing. Our..." "Nope." Until he meets the angel of the Lord and he makes this shift over to here. This is the connection worldview. We'll take a break here in just a second. This is the connection worldview. This is Genesis chap 1. And what Moses is saying is, "This is what you guys have grown up in every day of your life for hundreds of years." I'm saying, "This is the worldview we're in. That we're in. Can read it in any media that you look at. Is putting forth this worldview. And you better be afraid, 'cause your team's going to lose unless you you start doing something about it." That's what we grew up. But this is Genesis chapter 1. And imagine Moses is going, "This whole thing that you've grown up in, it's not even true. It's not even true anywhere in the universe. It's not true. Here's what's true: Genesis chapter 1. In the beginning." This is the worldview that was put into play. This one in the world: "There is enough for everyone." Do you know? Do you believe that? In the world right now, there is enough food for every human being alive. Do you believe there is enough or not? Let me tell you, I just read this last month from the guy that runs the world hunger for the UN. He's a believer. He used to be the governor of South Carolina. He's an amazing dude. Um, I heard him say this: "In the world right now, right now, there's enough food to feed the entire population of the world one and a half times." And at the same time, thousands of people are starving to death every day. How is that possible? How is it possible? Right? It's possible because this is where we all live. Why? If, if this person has a, enough food to feed all these people and they're not doing it, why would they not be doing it? Huh? Afraid. Afraid of what? Not enough for me? Or they don't deserve it? How about that one? They don't deserve it. Or, "I'll give you food if you agree with everything I say." That's why we have people dying of starvation. Not because God didn't put enough food in the world. It's because when we live in this worldview, we're like, "We're so sorry. We can't help you. You're bad guys. You made your own choice. You made your bed, go lie in it. We're locking up the gates. You're out." We feel good about that. Well, you do because this is the world view we live in. Except it's not true. That's not true. This is true.

So think of this. So Jesus is teaching 5,000 plus people. See how when you go read these stories, it makes a big difference what worldview you're in. And why the worldview is so important. So Jesus is feeding 5,000 people. And, and this, this story is told in all four Gospels because it's addressing this. The feeding of the 5,000 is a huge illustration in the Gospels. Like, God fed 5,000 people. Great. That's a miracle. Good. But here's what he's, so he's up there, he teaches 5,000 people. He's feeding them in a way, right? And then he's got his team with them, with him. And he, and he says to his team, "According to which gospel you read in, uh, what should we do with these people? They're hungry." And even the disciples, man, these guys are hungry. And Jesus like, "Okay, what, what, what should we do with them?" This is how they think. They don't think they're bad. They don't think they're mean. They're not. They don't hate people. This is the only way they know how to think. "Well, well, we realize that we don't have enough food." "Is that a fact?" "That's a fact." "Yep." "Nope. We don't have enough food. We counted. We measured. We don't have enough. And even if we wanted to pay for it, which we don't, even if we wanted to, it would take a lot of money. And we're pretty sure, as good stewards of God's money, that would be wasteful. And so they, we can't afford it. So we just can't do it. We can't do it. We'd love to help, but we can't." So Jesus says, "Okay, wow. So then what are you going to do with the people?" "We're gonna send them away." "What do you do with needy people?" "You send them away, right?" "Why?" "Cuz we don't have enough for them." Doesn't that make perfect sense? Yes, it makes perfect sense. "Separate them from us so that we can eat our own food and spend our own money." See, I'm not saying that they're selfish, mean, bitter, nasty, prej. I'm just saying this is the way they think. It's the way we think. Because like, what else are you going to do? What's God going to supply? Well, so Jesus says, "So that's your plan? You're going to send him away?" "That's the plan. That's you guys have come up with that plan. You're going to send him away." "Yeah. There is one kid here though. It's not going to, it's insignificant. But we'll mention it. There's one kid here. Um, it's a drop in the bucket. It's kind of a waste of time. But he's got five loaves and two fish." And Jesus is like, "All right. Since the adults can't figure this out, I'll get a kid. Can I borrow your lunch?" "Sure. We would give you our lunch, but you know." So I'll take your, "Give me your lunch." And here's what he does with what is given by this kid. It's so interesting what he does. He breaks it. That's what he does. He breaks what is given to him. And he holds it up to God. Now, when we get to the parable of the sewer, this is so important. This process. He takes what you give him and he breaks it. Like, "What do you do? What did you just do?" Because what we're bringing them is too small. And he's going to break it so he can enlarge it. But you have to give it to him first. He breaks it. He holds it up to God. And it increases far beyond what anyone planned. This is the connection model. And then he says to the disciples, "This is interesting. Not, 'I'm going to feed them.' 'You feed them.'" That's what he tells you. "Feed them. You can do this." You don't believe it yet because you live over here. One day you're going to live over here. Not today. So I'm going to teach you today that you live like this. But there's another way. And this is the other way. "There's more than enough for everyone."

When, all the time, all the time, what's the way to it? It's a mystery. Rico's back there. Rico is an expert on this stuff. The universe is a mystery. There's nothing certain about it, right? I mean, we know certain things, but there's so much to know. How certain can we be? In the sciences, we're even like, "Wow." And then it's like, the mystery just goes like this. And every time you take a step and go, "Oh, we figured that out," it goes like this. This is a lie. This has never been true. Nothing is certain. We understand parts of things, okay? We got that. Aristotle says this about gravity. Newton says, "Well, kind of." But really, gravity is this. Oh, Einstein says, "Well, kind of." But gravity's like this. And Plank says, "Well, kind of." But it's like this. And then they're into quantum. And it's like, "Oh my gosh, we don't even know any of this stuff yet." But God's like, "Follow me into the mystery of life." This is the greatest thing about it. And bring me what you have. And I will break it and hold it up to the Father and expand it. And come on, stop telling me you don't have enough. And there's not enough. And they're going to hurt us. And the bad guys are. Stop saying all that stuff to me. And get out of this. And pay attention. "Where did you learn this?" It's what he says to Adam and Eve. "Who told you this?" "Who told you this stuff? Why are you hiding? Why are you ashamed?" "I didn't tell you to be ashamed. How are you so certain that you should be ashamed of yourself? I didn't even tell you to be ashamed. And in fact, I'm over here coming to get you. Do you notice that?" "Why?" "Because I, this is my world. You do not disconnected my creation. You have to invent a lie to think this is a good idea and try and live in the lie. That's called hell." Like you think this separation thing is true? That's absolute hell. It'll destroy all of you. You'll never get out of the war that this is going to create inside of you and outside of you. But over here, connected. Don't send them away. Stay connected to them. Stay connected to them. There's a, enough for everyone. How? Let's figure it out. And every time the Lord leads them into something, he does it differently. Have you noticed that? He never says the same thing twice to people. His discourse style is not this formula. "Well, there's four things you need to know about God." "First of all, you're separated." "Let's start over here." "First of all, you're sinful, then separated from God." And down we go. I'm like, "Wow, we're so." And, and it's just like, "And here's the certain way." Like that. But over here, the disciples are like, "What is the kingdom like? What is it? And how do you get in?" And Jesus like, "Well, okay, to get in, you got to be like a little child." "Okay, beautiful." And then the next time, "How do you get in?" "You got to be born again." "What about the little child thing?" "Yes." "What about the born again?" "Yes." "And your righteousness has to see that of the Pharisees." "Which one of those is right?" "Yes." Do you see that? He does go for, "Here's a four-point plan. Stop asking me that question. It's a mystery." And he's going through the mystery. There's enough mystery. And look at this fallibility. Oh my gosh, fallibility. Fallibility, fallibility is learning. Fallibility is learning. Fallibility is learning. Don't be afraid to fail. Never be afraid to fail. Does anyone ever fail? Jesus, some person counted it. I think it's 49 times that directly fail him. 49 times. You know what he does every time they fail? Do you know what he says to them? "Oh my gosh, failure, failure, failure. You're not going to get into the elite school. You're not going to make it." This is what he says: "How many times do I have to keep telling you who you really are? How many times I have to keep telling you who I really am? Come on, stay connected. Don't separate from me. Come on, come on. Here we go. Get up. Here we go. Here we go." Do you know how many times he forgives them? This is important. Do you know how many times he forgives them when they fail him? How many times? Every time. Every single time. But, but who is it forgiving them? This little guy, Jesus, the Christ, is the, the one, the one that slowed down enough for us to actually see him. That him, the one. He's the one going, "Let's go. Come on. We can do it again. Stop believing this stuff that they keep saying to you. Come on." "Yeah, but there's only one way to get to this goal." "No, there's not. There's a hundred ways. I'm going to shock you at how you can get here. Stop letting them tell you this is the only way. It's not the only way. I am the way. I am the way. Follow me." To what? "All of any of it." Falling down is part of the plan. It's the reality of. And when you're in this model, when you're moving like, "Okay, there's enough for all of us in this room. I don't know how it's going to work out. I just know it will. I don't know how. I don't know when. But I know it will." And I know we're going to fail along the way. So that's okay. I don't mind if you fail. There's enough for us. We have enough time. God will give the provision for whatever it is he's invited us into. And we're in that model, then I'm free to love the other. Because I'm not self-protecting my little peace and self-promoting my little peace all the time. So now I can look at at you and go, "In this worldview, which is true, if you and I separate, we both lose."

There are certain things Don and I have been dreaming about in our life. And you're going to find out the next time we meet, the parable of the swer. And the whole thing is about dreaming. It's about you dreaming again, man. We, we're like over here like, and like there's like no like, "What's in here?" Let's go dream again. Dream. And so, and me, me and Donna, like, you know, we've, we've been together a long time, 40 years married. And we knew each other since 19. And like, we've been all these places. And we have these, these dreams. And you have these dreams. And they're like little seeds. As we're going to see when we get to Matthew 13, is astounding. And you're like, "When is this little thing gonna grow?" This idea. Like, like, "Let's, we have an idea. Let's make a wholeness center one day." Jesus. And can we, can we like, "What about? Could we write a screenplay?" But that was so secret, I didn't even want God to hear it. I don't know who I was saying it to, exactly. "Oh, I'd love to a screenplay." Because it's embarrassing. God's like, "Are you kidding me? Are you kidding me? Do you know how hard that is? Do you know how difficult that is? There's only one way." You know how hard that is? So many people. So I just kept it private, you know. And these like, all these little dreams down in there. But if you just get off of this thing and you just, just present tense, just in the present tense, forget the future, forget the past, just, just today, God, what would one day look like that I walked through not in scarcity? And this is a discipline because your brain is drilled into "not enough." It is locked on it. And scarcity and fear and protection and oh my gosh, here they all, that stuff. And then self-interest. And so, but then I just, over time, we started to realize like, "Wow, it's not, it's a mystery." And so it's like, when we, we talk about our youngest son, you know, who, in sixth grade in North Carolina, he go, "I, I, I just want to be a skateboarder for Jesus." "That's my identity." And I'm thinking, "That's not an identity." I don't know why I said that because I'm a good Christian father. That's why I said it in the book. I was like, "And Icap put for Jesus." And then God says to me, "Move that kid to Baghdad." "Like, what? Move that kid to Baghdad? Move your whole family to Baghdad, Iraq?" "What now?" "Is there skateboarding in Bag?" "They never even heard of it. And there's a war going on. It's the worst place you could take a sixth grader who will be an eighth grader to learn to be a skateboarding professional." When I get enough courage to talk to my eighth grader, uh, "I know you want to be a skateboarder for Jesus, but, and not but, we're moving to Iraq." Back that. He says, "Uh, isn't there a on there?" "Fact is there? There as there are there?" "Fact?" "Then you're taking me to the place." This is what he said. "To ruin my future." And that really hurt my feelings. And so I went to God and said, "God, you're making me take my kid to a place that's going to ruin his future. Do, how many people in the bible say that this to God? Do you not know what's going on here? How many people in the bible say that to God?" "I'll help you. All of them say that." "Do you not know who I am? Do you not know how old I am?" All they're, we're always doing fact checks on God. It's like he doesn't know. Like, "Do you know where Iraq is? Like, there's a war there." He's in eighth grade. And then you have these little dreams. And I just said, "God, what?" Like, "I don't." And now our, our son, you know, he became a Red Bull skater and all that stuff because he was in Baghdad. That's how it worked. That's how it happened. And he would say, "When God tells you he wants you to be a skateboarder for Jesus, and your dad says you're going to move to a war zone in a country where there's no skateboarding, run to that place because it's a mystery. God takes that dream, he breaks it, and he holds it up and he makes it greater than anything you could have asked for. But how he gets there, it's a, about timing. That's what it's about. And don't start walking backwards or in a circle. Walk forward into this mystery." Our son at 14, he comes to me. We prayed a week about it. And he said, "Dad, I, I, I don't understand how this, why God would ask you to move us there." He said, "I don't understand why that's happening in light of what's happening in my own, you know, walk with Jesus." "It's cool that a 14-year-old can talk like this. And they can, um, he said, "But I do know this. I know my identity. And I know that if we stay together, it'll happen. And he said, "And I will never bring this up again in any negative way to you, no matter what happens there." And right when he said that, it was done. The Lord's like, "Beautiful. Well done." This is going to go. What if he said, "No, I'm not going. I'm staying here." Jumps over. In this model, this thing would have fractured into pieces. Right? But we stayed connected. I wanted him to be connected to me. He wanted to be connected. And we stay in this. And so we can move in the mystery. And we can fail together. We can fail together. And we can love each other. And all this is the model of Jesus. And all, all this is a model of humanity.

The thing that's really important to me that you understand is that when I did, like, for example, when we did this at Harvard or a place like that, do you notice I'm not, there's no Bible verses up here? Right? And so I was walking those undergrads and postdocs through this. And at the end of the time we were together, it's pretty intense. All, all of them agreed with this. All of them. They all agreed that they were in this worldview. The whole room. These are the smartest people we've got. Um, and so, and so what's going to happen? So these elite, super smart people are going to go out, especially I said this to the undergrad, you're going to go out in the world with this elite education and all this stuff. And you're going to make the exact same mistakes everyone before you has made. And there's nothing you can do about it unless you move over to here. And they said, "And this is all you can hope for." In the first session like that, is for, we call it confession. The, I just wanted the whole room to confess that this is, in fact, where we are. That is a huge victory. And to know there's another way we could be doing it. They don't know. We do know. But we have to know. We have this is what Moses is saying to the Israelites. "If you're gonna, we're going to set up a nation that's unlike anything that's ever been seen. It's not Oz. It's a real government with real governing policy that's unlike anything anyone has ever seen before. It has real rules. It has real policy. It has real foreign policy that's different than any empire would ever come up with because all empires are built here. Only the kingdom is built here." And Moses's warning to them was, "When you establish a nation that's a light on a hill that looks like this, do not drift back into this." Which is exactly what they did because this lie is everpresent. And we breathe it every single day. And it kills dreams. And it makes us greedy. And it makes us want empire. And empire kills us instead of wanting kingdom, which sets us free. This doesn't mean if you make tons of money, you're bad. Has nothing to do with this. This is a, this is a world view. It's a mentality. "Seek first the kingdom, the connection, and all of it will come with it." Not like, "Go over here and die." One of the Harvard guys did say to me, "Give me an example of a human being that lives like this." And I said, "Well, Martin Luther King Jr., Gandhi, Jesus." He said, "They're all dead." I was like, "Yeah." I said, "Well, there self-sacrificial anyway." It didn't help my case at that point. But, but, so, but I don't mean to say that anyone that makes this is ridiculous. You know, it, the question is, in this, are we moving in this world view? And money and all that is just a part of it. It's not the goal of it, right? Like so, just so you know that.

So in the, in, in the Moses, when they're going through the desert, here's the, here's the freedom from bondage event. They come out and they start walking through the wilderness. And as they're walking through the wilderness, this is Chronos time. This is your life. This is how life really goes. You're walking through your life and you're going to walk into these Kairos moments. And if you read the Gospels and look for the difference in the Greek word, it says "at that time." And see if it says Chronos or Kairos. And watch what happens. Because sometimes it says, "And Jesus, at that Chronos, went off to pray." It's just like, "At three." Okay? But then there's other times it says, "At that Kairos, Jesus went off to pray." It's very different. What he's doing. Very different. What he's doing. So what's the difference between him going off to pray Chronos, because that's a part of his discipline, versus he went off to pray because God said, "Time out. Come over here." That's different. And these are ahead of you. The rest of your life. They're already in place. It's like if I'm walking down the beach and I see a hotel on the beach. And the hotel is, I don't know, five miles away. The hotel will never move. Never move. These will never move. How long is it going to take me to get to that hotel? How fast are you going to walk? I could turn around and go that way. You're never going to get there. Did the hotel move? No. You're walking in the wrong direction. Repentance is turn and go that way. Are you going to run to the hotel? You'll get there faster. Are you going to get drunk on the way? That'll slow your way down. Are you going to wander? Are you going to do try and do it in circles like this? Like, "Oh, I like that over there. I better get back to this." "Oh, I like that over there." Like that. Are you going to lay down and cry because it's too hot? The hotel never moves. Do you understand that? It's waiting for you. And Jesus is right next to you going, "Come on, come on." "We don't have enough money." "You have. We have enough. There's five steps ahead. There's a way. There's an access to funding. Come on." "Yeah, but I can't see it. It's a mystery." "I want to surprise you." "I need to know now. I don't want to go unless I have every detail in my hand." Like, that's no fun. He wants to show you these things. He, it's a connection between you. And so as you walk like this, this is Israel walking through the wilderness all the way to the promised land. Here it is. And they, and know their identity. And we get, we have Mosaic governance has worked into our system. And we understand what's the policy on military. What's the policy on taxation. They're building all that in. CU it's the real world. And it's better than any human has ever come up with in terms of governance. It's astounding. We won't be able to get into all that. But, and so they're walking along. And they get all the way to here. And they go, "Ah, we're grasshoppers. We decided. We went into the land. It's exactly like you said. It's the most amazing thing we've ever seen. But there's giants in there." "I, and I told you everything was big in there. The grapes are huge. Everything's huge. Even the people. I just didn't mention the people quite as often. But they're giants in there." And they're like, "We, we can't do giants." "Why?" "Because the last time we were with giants, way back in our amygdala, in our history, the giants killed us. And they were called the Empire of Egypt. And we lost. And now, yeah, it's been great. It's been amazing. Yeah, mana. Good. Springs out of rocks. Nice. Yeah, we conquered these little piddly tribes. But this is Egypt all over again. And we're going to die. And we're not going in." And we do this all the time. Time. We have a little dream. And, and God's like, "Okay, tell me more about the dream." "Well, it's kind of stupid." "Like, who called it stupid?" "Back over here. And I don't know if I really, I don't know if I can really do it because I'm not that good at." There you are. Back in the worldview. And Jesus like, "Get back. Come over here. Come over here. Stay with me. Stay with me. Stay with me. Let's go. Come on." Like this. And they wander around. And the two guys that said, "Hey, we think we can do it." They go in there. There's, there's the scriptures telling you what to do on Monday. Go forward. Move forward. Don't stop. Why are you stopping? Who told you that? These are the, these are the questions of the sc, of the story Moses is telling the Israelites. Look at this. Look what happens in this world view. Look what happens in this world. But even when you get in this one, he will come get you. It's astounding.

No matter how deep you get in here, he will keep pursuing you. You will separate; he will never separate. He can't separate. Why? He's, he's omnipresent. There's nowhere you can go where he isn't with you. Unless you go deep enough into the lie, right here, and right here, and hide in this lost, closed cave in that lie, you'll think he's not there. You'll believe he's not there. And the whole time, he's right there going, "Let me know when you're ready. Let me know when you're ready. Come on, like that." Until you drop dead in the desert. And then you're standing face to face with him because you just died. And he's like, "All right, here you are." And you're like, "You still love me?" "Yeah. Love you. I've loved you the whole time. Been with you the whole time. Every year you walked around in that whole 40 years, after 10 years, I was right there going, '10 years of this? Do you want to keep doing 10 years like this? 10 years? Is that enough of you of this boredom? Of this insanity? Is this enough? You want to go? Let's go.' It's got to be better than this." "Well, I kind of like this boring, pointless insanity. I've kind of figured out how to cope with it. There's a really good series on TV."