Thank you for responding to our YouTube appeal for Ukraine Rapid Relief by jamesgilbert.org. Here are six ways you can contribute to our ongoing relief efforts to war-weary Ukrainian citizens:
Secure credit cardhere. INSTANT AUTO-RECEIPT FOR TAX DEDUCTION!Please consider covering the credit card processing fee.
Your Zelle account to our Bank of America Zelle ID is: office@jamesgilbert.org. (More info on Zelle here.)
Checkpayable to Jim Gilbert Ministries to PO Box 141928, Gainesville FL 32614. Write the word UKRAINE on the memo line.
Remember to include your email or physical address in order to receive a receipt for tax-deductible giving. This is important for anyone wanting to keep Uncle Sam from wasting more money. We won’t add you to yet another list!
Thank you for your interest, trust, and prayers, as together we help relieve the suffering of these Ukrainian people.
I’m headed to Poland and Ukraine for 3 weeks, my 3rd mission in 13 months. Our targets: 1) continue helping Ukrainian widows and orphans; 2) aid Kherson flood victims of Putin’s dam bombing; 3) deliver relief where supply lines are cut off; 4) supply funds for life-saving bandages that our close contacts are delivering to wounded Ukrainian civilians, especially husbands and fathers trying to save their homes. Casualties can drop by 70% with proper bandages and tourniquets; 5) minister in 5 Polish cities, conducting worship symposiums and aiding more refugees.
We American Christians must remain tenderhearted. I’m still awed by what happened a year ago in Poland when our daughter Lexi and I met smiling, hopeful 5-year-old Ukrainian kids who didn’t know that their daddies, who had stayed home to fight, were dead. We had brought them food and blankets, so they made beautiful, personalized cards to thank us, and gave us big hugs because our help changed their lives. But Lexi’s life was changed too, by a hug from one innocent, utterly vulnerable little girl. She still often tells people about it if they ask her about Ukraine.
Lexi and I will never unsee those little ones’ innocent faces. Never. So I’m asking you: On October 5th, please send me back to Poland and UKRAINE.Join us here to change lives there. Here’s how:
Donate via Zelle, a no–fee, instant, 100% secure money transfer from any participating bank to our ministry account. Our Bank of America Zelle ID is also our email: office@jamesgilbert.org. (More on Zelle here.) NOTE: To receive a tax receipt, you MUST send an email address to us. We won’t add you to more lists.
Donate securely on this page via credit card. Just click here. You’ll receive an automated receipt for tax-deductible giving. Please consider covering the credit card processing fee.
Give via Apple Pay (352-316-1212); Venmo (james@jamesgilbert.org); or PayPal(@jimgilbertministries).
Mail your checkpayable to Jim Gilbert Ministries to PO Box 141928, Gainesville FL 32614. Write the word UKRAINE on the memo line.
You know Dolly and me.We’ll do as much as you make possible. My heart is full. Let’s make it my pockets too. I promise to empty them wisely.
(Wanna see Poland & Ukraine for yourself? Click the video below.)
Welcome to the Ukraine Rapid Relief Fund and jamesgilbert.org. We asked you to give in 2022! You gave $130,397 towards Ukraine relief, and we actually SENT $133,000, directly into Ukraine and to refugee efforts in Poland. But Putin’s monstrous war isn’t over, as he bombs not just military targets, but homes, schools—anywhere he can kill innocents. Just yesterday, as I write, air raid sirens sounded over the entire nation. So, WE MUST KEEP FIGHTING BACK, not with bombs, but with life-saving aid sent in Jesus’ name. Look, the worst thing now would be to let compassion fatigue overtake us.
I leave for both Ukraine and Poland in October, and as I said in my most recent Facebook video, this year we’re targeting three relief ministries in particular. All three get relief to areas hardly reached by others. Find out more by clicking the photo below. Then come back here.
For now, let me be bold one more time: No tipping. No “latte” money. Please give AGAIN! Look, when I was in Poland last September, I met smiling 5-year old kids who don’t know that their daddies, who stayed behind to fight, are dead. No more hugs and nightly tuck-ins. They’re gone. Forever. So you can see why I’m saying once again that You and I need to act now!
There are four secure ways you can give, listed in order of efficiency. NOTE: If giving via Zelle, you MUST send your email address to office@jamesgilbert.org in order to receive a receipt for tax-deductible contribution.
Donate via Zelle, a no–fee, immediate, 100% secure money transfer from your participating bank to our ministry’s Bank of America account. Check your online banking page to see if yours is one of the rapidly growing number of banks using Zelle. (You may need to type the word Zelle in your bank’s search box.) Our Bank of America Zelle ID is 352-316-1212. Click here for more Zelle info: https://www.zellepay.com/how-it-works
Donate securely via credit card by clicking the blue Contribute button on the upper right of this page. (On a smartphone, it’s in the upper-right drop-down menu.) You will receive an immediate receipt for your tax-deductible donation via email. Please consider covering the credit card processing fee.
Mail a check payable to Jim Gilbert Ministries to our office at PO Box 141928, Gainesville FL 32614. Write the word UKRAINE on the memo line.
Give via an app like Apple Pay, Venmo or PayPal. (NOTE: The Cash app has changed their non-profit rules, so we request that you avoid that app.)
Ukrainian lives hang in the balance and YOU AND I need to act now. Thank you.
The Kurds asked us to help write true religious liberty into their new constitution
Last year the government of Iraq’s Kurdistan Region asked for our help. Please interview Christian leaders, they requested. What religious rights would they want to be specified in a new Kurdish Constitution? Would we then write recommendations spelling out these rights?
Proud to be named honorary Peshmerga
I landed in Erbil on August 20, 2017. The very next day an armed Iranian militia—yes, Iranian—ambushed and detained our team near Mosul. For the next hour, some 100 militants surrounded us with AK-47 rifles, shouting and firing dozens of rounds into the air. We tried to turn around, but machine guns and a huge rocket launcher blocked us in. Thank the Lord, Iraq’s Prime Minister himself intervened and effected our release.
The election of President Trump, as well as rightward movements in Europe, are prompting US conservatives to speak of the death of socialism. This is abject blindness. It is socialists that are being rejected, not socialism.
America has already embraced socialism in the forms of public education, social security, and even healthcare, where we choose between the socialism of Obamacare on the Left and the socialism-lite of Trumpcare on the faux-Right. Our President is a pragmatic populist, not a principled conservative. Hence, when he ran for office he named conservatives to his cabinet because his base wanted them, but once in office has embraced socialism in healthcare because the electorate at large wants it. As for the philosophical differences between the two, they don’t matter to a self-styled dealmaker-in-chief.
Meet the authors and hosts of The Worldview Course
(A post in which James toots his own horn, and thereby blows it)
Polar opposites in virtually every way except their common consecration to God and his Word, Mark Nauroth and James Gilbert, aka The Worldview Guys, are as unlikely a combination as waffles and fried chicken. In other words, bring these two together and things just work, especially when they’re writing, podcasting or hosting their brand new venture, The Worldview Course.
Ask the young millennial from California and the…uh, “older gentleman” from Florida why they’ve joined forces to become the “Guys” and you’ll get a single answer: “We’re out to win the culture, not the culture war.”
“The Worldview Course is a 13-session video series we wrote and cohosted for a target audience that includes both small groups and families,” explains Mark. We purposely staged it like a giant Apple commercial, and gave the whole project a fun and slightly irreverent tone.”
The course includes both DVD and online video, a sleek 145-page study guide with wide margins for journaling, online testing and more. “We’re both communicators: a writer and a web designer,” says James, “and we share a passion to connect the dots between God’s word and John Q. Public’s world.”
All around the world, there are tens of thousands of Passion-themed blog posts have been published this week, some showing more profound insight than others, but nearly all of them written from hearts and minds wanting to honor Jesus’ unthinkable suffering for our sins. I wish I could write one too, but…
It’s not that I have nothing to say. After 48 years in ministry, I doubtless do have insights worth sharing. Yet, right now, for some reason, they seem worth less—worthless—rather than worth more. I suppose the easiest way to explain is to quote the late Corrie ten Boom:
“The more I get to know God, the less I understand Him, but the more I trust Him.”
I was privileged to meet and host Corrie ten Boom a couple of years before she passed away at age 91. It didn’t take long to see that there was no pretense about her. When this stoop-shouldered, tiny giant of the faith said something that wowed us all, she wasn’t attempting to be profound; she was just being honest. Likewise, I just want to write something honest here.
Advice from a missionary who doesn't believe in "witnessing"
Guilt for not praying and studying the Bible is only one of the spooks haunting the hallways of Christians’ minds. This unfriendly ghost has cousins–co-conspirators that work to keep you quiet and defeated. Every time the prospect of giving voice to your faith in Christ presents itself, the ghosts of Failure, Inadequacy, and Hypocrisy flit past your ear, whispering the lines that have worked so well ever since Saint Peter chickened out by a campfire near Calvary.
The ghost of Failure leads off with a whisper, dredging up memories of the few attempts you made right after you became a Christian:
You got completely tongued-tied.
He brought up questions you couldn’t answer.
She got mad and has avoided you ever since.
You hate knocking on doors.
The sound of forty pounds of wood slamming in your face is still fresh in your mind, when Inadequacy steps up to tell you you’re just not cut out for this, pointing out very good reasons for you to keep quiet:
Reflections on the new & improved false gods of D.C.
I once heard a perennial local candidate say she was running for office for the umpteenth time because “I love politics,” as though her lust for authority were a qualification for it. In fact, it provided a compelling reason not to vote for her, just as one would not hire a marriage counselor who’s been to the altar several times. (I also heard the late Mickey Rooney say in all seriousness that his eight marriages demonstrated his commitment to the institution.)
Not voting for a bad candidate, however, should never lead to not voting at all, as was the temptation for many conservative Christians during the 2016 Presidential elections. To the contrary, we should participate in the process, not because we love politics, but because we love the God who ordained politics. Romans 13:4 calls the office holder “God’s servant for your good,” so that truth alone makes us responsible both to pray and vote, if not to run for office.
President Ronald Reagan’s awareness of his own accountability to God seemed to settle on him after he took office, and my affection for him grew along the way. Such conviction could never have come from loving politics, but only from a love for Truth. Not your truth vs. mine. Not new truth, but the Truth.
Sometimes stomping the serpent's head means breaking a few toes
Representing Christ properly occasionally leaves you no choice but to stop a trash-talker in his tracks, to stomp the serpent’s head even if it means breaking someone’s toes in the process. But most Christians aren’t confident in their ability to obey St. Paul’s instructions to “put off falsehood and speak truthfully to [your] neighbor,” while being careful that “in your anger, [you] do not sin” or “give the devil a foothold” (Ephesians 4:25-27).
Gets harder as it goes, doesn’t it? Don’t lie; no problem. Tell the truth to my neighbor; well, sometimes I’d sooner let things pass. But be angry without sinning? Hah! Try doing my taxes sometime.
Anger needn’t become the launching pad for ongoing resentment, not if you understand that “righteous anger” is always founded on a righteous standard: the Bible. But, like spanking a child or punishing a criminal, displaying righteous anger also comes with a couple of rules.
It is never to be exercised on non-scriptural grounds.
It is never to be withheld on non-scriptural grounds.
So, when is it appropriate to blow your stack for Jesus?
My wife and I once found ourselves facing that quandary during a tour of Apartheid-era South Africa, where I was addressing primarily white congregations, challenging them to not merely express sorrow for past racism, but to actively, sincerely embrace their black brothers while time remained.
