Mosaic Lincoln

What is the essence of our faith? What is the message of the church? What is being a Christian really about? Depending on who you ask you can get wildly different answers. And far too often those answers sound far more American than they do Christian. If we are to follow in the way of Jesus, we must strip off all of the cultural baggage we've added to our message and get back to what it'...

It's no secret that ours is an increasingly skeptical generation. Whether it's congress and its politicians, multinational corporations and their CEOs, or religious institutions and their leaders, we are largely skeptical. Perhaps nowhere is this more true than when it comes to organized religion. For those who follow Jesus, however, each of us must eventually grapple with an inconvenien...

Any good therapist will tell you that you cannot heal what you do not acknowledge, and what you do not consciously acknowledge will remain in control from within, festering and destroying you and those around you. How often do we hold onto our past mistakes, our guilt and shame, when God wants to set us free? Confession is a beautiful, holy, misunderstood part of Christian tradition. Let's re...

God is not a being that we can wrap our head around, but we sure can wrap our heart around Him. Prayer is like flossing... we know we need to do it, but we tend to only step into it in times of emergency. Our prayers tend to focus on our anxiety, fears, and lack of control. Brian Zahnd says of modern prayer that, "we try and manage God and get him to do what we want to do." We want to pr...

Rituals are often misunderstood in our western 21st century culture. It can be easy to see them as superstitious or naïve, but the truth is the church has been practicing certain rituals for the past 2000 years. Many of these practices continue in order to draw our head and hearts into the presence of God. One of those often misunderstood rituals is the sacrament of Communion. How can we see Commu...

James 1:27 “Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress...” Could we live in a world without orphans? John 10:10 says that we will have LIFE in its fullest. Nebraska promises us The Good Life. What if THE GOOD LIFE is only experienced when we live for the GOOD of others?

John 10:10 says that we will have LIFE in its fullest. Nebraska promises us The Good Life. What if THE GOOD LIFE is only experienced when we live for the GOOD of others? How can we help those in need without hurting them? How can we empower without creating dependency? How does Jesus empower us live THE GOOD LIFE?

Have you ever missed the moment? Where you knew you should have stepped in and done something, but you wrote it off and said, "someone else will take care of that person." What if in the brush off, we missed something bigger than the moment? What if we missed God in disguise?! John 10:10 says that we will have LIFE in its fullest. Nebraska promises us The Good Life. What if THE GOOD LIFE...

Who is my neighbor? A question that Jesus was asked 2000 years ago and we are still asking it today. Jesus promised us in John 10:10 that we will have LIFE in its fullest. Nebraska promises us The Good Life. What if THE GOOD LIFE is only experienced when we live for the GOOD of others?

In the final week of our Misread series we jump into the turbulent waters of Romans 9 and ask the question, what kind of God are we dealing with? Is God an artist or a master puppeteer who works through coercion and control? Does God take risks and give us the freedom to choose or does he meticulously control everything in order to carry out his plan? Does free will even exist or is the future pre...

This week we wade into sensitive waters. We are talking about a heavy and loaded subject, one that has been the cause of much disunity and disagreement in the church: the role of women in the body of Christ. To begin this conversation, we are exploring together the words of 1 Timothy 2:12: “I do not permit a woman to teach or to assume authority over a man; she must be quiet.” Is Paul being chauvi...

This week we explore a confusing promise found in John 14:13-14. Jesus said, "I will do whatever you ask in my name so the Father may be glorified in the Son. You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it." What did Jesus mean by this? If we've been given this promise, then why do so many of us find ourselves frustrated at times by unanswered prayer? Is prayer just random...

This week we explore what may very well be the most popular verse amongst Christians and non-Christians alike: “Do not judge, or you too will be judged." (Mt 7:1). What did Jesus really mean by that? Are we as Christians never to exercise judgment? Are there certain scenarios in which we can? If so, does it make a difference whether the person on the receiving end is a Christian? Special than...

We conclude our two-month journey in the Psalms by spending one last week in one of the most recognizable and loved passages in all of the bible: Psalm 23. As we do we seek to answer the question behind so many questions: Can God really be trusted? If I surrender all of my life into his hands, what can I really expect? Special thanks to Phillip Keller and Larry Osborne for their contributions to t...

David shows in Psalm 25 what is looks like to practice lament-- calling out and naming before God the injustices around us. Through examining the role that lament played in Israelite society, we see how it functions as an act of rebellion against apathy, despair, and cynicism. And, most importantly, we see the connection between lament and hope. For more information about Mosaic, visit us at www.m...

The twenty-third Psalm is easily one of the most recognizable passages in all of the bible. From film and music, to celebrity memorials and 9/11, the words of the twenty-third Psalm has found its way into nearly every expression of pop culture. There is something about this passage that has struck a chord with humanity throughout the centuries. Join us as we spend the next couple weeks journeying...

Doubt is sometimes treated like a dirty little secret in the church. We don’t like it. We are very uncomfortable with it. At times, we even pretend like it doesn’t exist. It seems few are willing to talk about it with the kind of raw, introspective honesty as the Psalmists do. But the truth is we all experience moments, days, even entire seasons when we struggle with doubt. So how are we to unders...

When was the last time your heart broke over sin in your life? For many people repentance has simply become nothing more than saying, "I'm sorry". But repentance is not an emotion. It is not feeling sorry for your sins. It is a decision. It is deciding that you have been wrong in supposing that you could manage your own life and be your own god; it is deciding that you are wrong in...

Bono of U2 recently lamented: "In Christian art I find a lot of dishonesty...This is why I am suspicious of Christians - because of their lack of realism." While we may be tempted to present ourselves as being better than we really are, the Psalms show us a different way - one that both acknowledges and confronts the inevitable spiritual winters of the soul. Special thanks to Tim Keller...

This week we begin a two-month journey together in the book of Psalms. John Calvin said that in the Psalms “the Holy Spirit has drawn all the griefs, sorrows, fears, doubts, hopes, cares, perplexities, in short, all the distracting emotions with which the minds of men are wont to be agitated...all lurking places are discovered, and the heart is brought into the light.” Calvin called the Psalms &qu...

About 100 years ago Einstein theorized that time was not constant, and could run at different rates. Time is not a label on the universe but experienced individually. What implications does this have on our faith? How can we redeem the time that we have and see every moment as sacred?

Math is everywhere. In the money we spend, the produce we buy, and in the galaxy we live. Math can be intimidating, but if there is one thing math can teach us about life is that in order to succeed you need to fail. We learn better through failure, so why do we fear it so much? How can math teach our faith to embrace failure and problems rather than avoid them?

Niels Bohr said, “If Quantum Mechanics hasn’t profoundly shocked you, you haven’t understood it yet.” Quantum Mechanics is the study of the strange universe at the atomic an sub atomic level. Electrons that are in two places at once, cats that are both dead and alive at the same time, particles that affect each other instantly even if they are billions of light years apart. Quantum Mechanics is an...

It's easy for us to look back and say, "What fools," how did you not believe the earth was round or that the earth revolved around the sun. But it's not so easy to look at the present and say, "where am I foolish?"Historically the church and the scientific community have not gotten along, and for centuries the church has not handled the advancement of science very wel...

In week three of our Kingdom Economics series we look at what may be one of the strangest parables Jesus ever told. Though Jesus' words may initially strike us as odd, a deeper look reveals a gold mine of truth for how disciples are to manage the resources God has entrusted to them. Special thanks to Tim Keller, Greg Boyd and Dave Ramsey for their contributions to this message. To learn more...