July 6th, 2026
by Pastor Warfield
by Pastor Warfield
Move In Day | The Dispatch Series
The One Project | Step 3: Invest
There's something profoundly uncomfortable about closing the distance. We can pray for people from afar. We can acknowledge their struggles with a sympathetic nod. We can even identify those who need hope and add their names to our prayer lists. But what happens when God asks us to do more than notice—when He calls us to actually move in?
The Cost of Investment
In Luke 19, we encounter a moment that scandalized the religious crowd. Jesus didn't just stop at the sycamore tree where Zacchaeus perched. He didn't offer a word of encouragement from a safe distance. He went into Zacchaeus's home, sat at his table, and stayed long enough for transformation to take root.
The crowd's response? Murmuring. Complaint. Judgment.
"He has gone to be the guest with a man who is a sinner."
Notice something crucial here: the crowd wasn't upset that Jesus acknowledged Zacchaeus. They weren't bothered by a wave or even a brief conversation. Their contempt arose when Jesus crossed a line—when He chose association over respectability, presence over distance, investment over acknowledgment.
This reveals a dangerous tendency that lives in all of us: the temptation toward a faith that is comfortable noticing outsiders but unwilling to sit at their tables. A faith that can feel compassion from across the street but flinches at the cost of actual proximity.
The Most Ancient Model
To understand what Jesus did in Jericho, we must first understand what He did before Jericho. John 1:14 gives us the theological framework: "The word became flesh and made his dwelling among us."
The Greek suggests something even more intimate—He pitched His tent with us. He moved into the neighborhood.
This wasn't a distant decree from heaven. God didn't send a message or revise the plan with a less costly option. Instead, divinity shoved itself into the encasing of flawed flesh. The Creator experienced hunger, fatigue, temptation, tears, and ultimately death—all because He chose the most personal option available.
He became one of us.
This is the incarnation, and it's not just the story of our salvation—it's the model for Christian ministry. Investment isn't a strategy or a program; it's theology. It's doing what God did.
When we invest in someone's life, when we close the distance and enter their world, we're not inventing a new technique. We're continuing what Jesus has always done. We're moving in.
Love Versus Recruitment
Here's where we must tread carefully. There exists a version of outreach that treats people like projects. It follows a formula: identify, perform prescribed acts of friendliness, issue the invitation, and then—here's the telling part—if they respond, the relationship advances. If they don't, it quietly stalls.
The warmth was real enough, but it was conditional. It had a goal embedded in it.
People have incredibly sensitive radar for agendas. They can tell the difference between genuine friendship and friendship with a purpose. They know when they're being loved versus when they're being recruited. And if the only time you reach out is when you want them to attend something, they'll feel it. If the relationship cools the moment they decline an invitation, they'll remember.
Genuine investment means loving people fully, without condition, without an exit clause for when they don't respond the way we hoped. People aren't projects—they're image-bearers worthy of authentic love and friendship.
When you invest the way Jesus invested in Zacchaeus—when you show up without an agenda beyond loving them as they are—something remarkable happens. Not because you engineered it, but because genuine love always eventually raises a question in the one receiving it: "Why do you love me like this?"
That quiet internal question is the door that no program can open and no argument can force. It opens from the inside, and it opens because someone was willing to move in.
What Investment Actually Looks Like
Investment doesn't require a special plan, a curriculum, or a training manual. It requires a decision to show up consistently and genuinely for the person whose name God has placed on your heart.
Notice how Luke describes Zacchaeus's response in verse six: he "received him joyfully." Not reluctantly. Not dutifully. Not after careful deliberation about whether it was wise. He welcomed Jesus gladly because something about being seen, being chosen, and being specifically sought out produced not obligation but joy.
That gladness is what genuine investment produces in a person over time—not the pressure of someone who needs something from you, not the discomfort of being somebody's project, but the quiet, unexpected gladness of being genuinely known.
This week, investment might look like one concrete, genuine act of presence. Not a church invitation—not yet. Not passing along information or preparing a spiritual conversation. Simply reaching out as a person who cares.
Check in after something you know was hard for them. Ask questions you actually want answers to, then listen long enough to receive those answers. Show up for something in their life that has nothing to do with your agenda. Be present in a way that mirrors how the Word was present—unhurried, fully given to the person in front of you.
The Glory Becomes Visible
John tells us something profound about the incarnation: "We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth."
They saw His glory, but only because He showed up. They encountered grace and truth only because the Word became flesh and moved in among them. The glory was always there. The grace was always His. The truth was always truth. But it took the incarnation—it took God pitching a tent in the neighborhood of human experience—for anyone to see it and be changed by it.
The glory of God became visible the moment He stopped being distant.
The same dynamic is at work in your life right now. The love of God in you becomes visible to others the moment you stop keeping distance and start going in. When you sit at the table, when you stay past convenience, when you show up for things nobody else shows up for—that's when they start to wonder. That's when questions begin to form. That's when conversations you've been praying for become possible.
Not because you manufactured the moment, but because you moved into the neighborhood and let your life be a sermon before you ever said a word.
The Radical Act
The most radical thing God ever did wasn't parting the Red Sea or speaking from Sinai. The most radical thing God ever did was moving into the neighborhood. He took on skin, breathed our air, sat at tables with people whose reputations could damage His own, and touched the ones nobody else would touch.
The call to discipleship is a call to do likewise—to close the distance, to invest without agenda, to love without condition, to be present without exit strategies.
It will cost you something. Your time. Your comfort. Perhaps even your reputation among the religiously respectable.
But isn't that what God gave for you?
The Cost of Investment
In Luke 19, we encounter a moment that scandalized the religious crowd. Jesus didn't just stop at the sycamore tree where Zacchaeus perched. He didn't offer a word of encouragement from a safe distance. He went into Zacchaeus's home, sat at his table, and stayed long enough for transformation to take root.
The crowd's response? Murmuring. Complaint. Judgment.
"He has gone to be the guest with a man who is a sinner."
Notice something crucial here: the crowd wasn't upset that Jesus acknowledged Zacchaeus. They weren't bothered by a wave or even a brief conversation. Their contempt arose when Jesus crossed a line—when He chose association over respectability, presence over distance, investment over acknowledgment.
This reveals a dangerous tendency that lives in all of us: the temptation toward a faith that is comfortable noticing outsiders but unwilling to sit at their tables. A faith that can feel compassion from across the street but flinches at the cost of actual proximity.
The Most Ancient Model
To understand what Jesus did in Jericho, we must first understand what He did before Jericho. John 1:14 gives us the theological framework: "The word became flesh and made his dwelling among us."
The Greek suggests something even more intimate—He pitched His tent with us. He moved into the neighborhood.
This wasn't a distant decree from heaven. God didn't send a message or revise the plan with a less costly option. Instead, divinity shoved itself into the encasing of flawed flesh. The Creator experienced hunger, fatigue, temptation, tears, and ultimately death—all because He chose the most personal option available.
He became one of us.
This is the incarnation, and it's not just the story of our salvation—it's the model for Christian ministry. Investment isn't a strategy or a program; it's theology. It's doing what God did.
When we invest in someone's life, when we close the distance and enter their world, we're not inventing a new technique. We're continuing what Jesus has always done. We're moving in.
Love Versus Recruitment
Here's where we must tread carefully. There exists a version of outreach that treats people like projects. It follows a formula: identify, perform prescribed acts of friendliness, issue the invitation, and then—here's the telling part—if they respond, the relationship advances. If they don't, it quietly stalls.
The warmth was real enough, but it was conditional. It had a goal embedded in it.
People have incredibly sensitive radar for agendas. They can tell the difference between genuine friendship and friendship with a purpose. They know when they're being loved versus when they're being recruited. And if the only time you reach out is when you want them to attend something, they'll feel it. If the relationship cools the moment they decline an invitation, they'll remember.
Genuine investment means loving people fully, without condition, without an exit clause for when they don't respond the way we hoped. People aren't projects—they're image-bearers worthy of authentic love and friendship.
When you invest the way Jesus invested in Zacchaeus—when you show up without an agenda beyond loving them as they are—something remarkable happens. Not because you engineered it, but because genuine love always eventually raises a question in the one receiving it: "Why do you love me like this?"
That quiet internal question is the door that no program can open and no argument can force. It opens from the inside, and it opens because someone was willing to move in.
What Investment Actually Looks Like
Investment doesn't require a special plan, a curriculum, or a training manual. It requires a decision to show up consistently and genuinely for the person whose name God has placed on your heart.
Notice how Luke describes Zacchaeus's response in verse six: he "received him joyfully." Not reluctantly. Not dutifully. Not after careful deliberation about whether it was wise. He welcomed Jesus gladly because something about being seen, being chosen, and being specifically sought out produced not obligation but joy.
That gladness is what genuine investment produces in a person over time—not the pressure of someone who needs something from you, not the discomfort of being somebody's project, but the quiet, unexpected gladness of being genuinely known.
This week, investment might look like one concrete, genuine act of presence. Not a church invitation—not yet. Not passing along information or preparing a spiritual conversation. Simply reaching out as a person who cares.
Check in after something you know was hard for them. Ask questions you actually want answers to, then listen long enough to receive those answers. Show up for something in their life that has nothing to do with your agenda. Be present in a way that mirrors how the Word was present—unhurried, fully given to the person in front of you.
The Glory Becomes Visible
John tells us something profound about the incarnation: "We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth."
They saw His glory, but only because He showed up. They encountered grace and truth only because the Word became flesh and moved in among them. The glory was always there. The grace was always His. The truth was always truth. But it took the incarnation—it took God pitching a tent in the neighborhood of human experience—for anyone to see it and be changed by it.
The glory of God became visible the moment He stopped being distant.
The same dynamic is at work in your life right now. The love of God in you becomes visible to others the moment you stop keeping distance and start going in. When you sit at the table, when you stay past convenience, when you show up for things nobody else shows up for—that's when they start to wonder. That's when questions begin to form. That's when conversations you've been praying for become possible.
Not because you manufactured the moment, but because you moved into the neighborhood and let your life be a sermon before you ever said a word.
The Radical Act
The most radical thing God ever did wasn't parting the Red Sea or speaking from Sinai. The most radical thing God ever did was moving into the neighborhood. He took on skin, breathed our air, sat at tables with people whose reputations could damage His own, and touched the ones nobody else would touch.
The call to discipleship is a call to do likewise—to close the distance, to invest without agenda, to love without condition, to be present without exit strategies.
It will cost you something. Your time. Your comfort. Perhaps even your reputation among the religiously respectable.
But isn't that what God gave for you?
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