I have once been the recipient of a blank check. For a few fateful days I held the check in my hands, pondering the possibilities of all I could do with such a powerful gift. In reality, the check was from my parents, so there was no getting away with any shenanigans. But beyond the mere temptation of taking advantage of such a gift is the reality that it’s not so simple to just add a few extra zeros to a check. Most everyone has finite resources available to them, including my parents, so while I could write whatever number I wanted onto that small slip of paper, that doesn’t mean the bank will clear it.

But what if you did have a blank check? And what if the bank account from which that check drew money wasn’t limited to a finite amount of money? Imagine being a design engineer at Apple and having Tim Cook come to you and say, “I want you to design the next big thing. You have the entire company and all its resources at your disposal.” Now we’re not just talking a few thousand dollars in a bank account. Now we’re talking about a company that just broke the 3 trillion dollar market cap barrier earlier this month and is sitting on roughly 190 billion dollars in cash reserves. In fact, Apple has so much cash that even after buying back 81 billion dollars in stock last year, they’re still accumulating cash faster than they can give it away in the form of dividends. In other words, a blank check from Apple is as close as earthly possible to having an unlimited bank account.

It’s interesting that our theology sometimes doesn’t gain enough traction in our everyday lives. We may know theologically that God is infinite and omnipotent and generous. But that doesn’t always translate into a life lived with the confidence that God is infinite and omnipotent and generous. I think we probably approach God in prayer with the same type of embarrassed hesitancy we would have if we had to ask our parents for money. And even if we were given a blank check from God, I’m quite convinced we would treat that blank check like it was connected to our parent’s checking account rather than the cash reserves of Apple.

But here’s the thing. We have been given a blank check. A big one. One so cosmically big that we can’t begin to comprehend the resources we have available to us as believer. And yet we still approach God like he’s given us some things but ultimately has withheld the things we really need.

The apostle Paul told the Ephesian believers that God has “blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ” (Eph 1:3). That’s about the closest thing to a blank check you’re going to find in the Bible. “Blessing” here is talking about benefits. It’s talking about things given to us by God with the very important qualifier that these blessings are “spiritual,” meaning they are supernatural in nature and are the product of the work of the Holy Spirit (cf. 1 Cor 2:14-3:4; 15:44-46).

What does this mean for you and your everyday Christian life? It means you have a blank check given to you by God. It means you’re not lacking anything in Christ. You have every divine resource available to you. In fact, that’s exactly what the apostle Peter wrote in 2 Peter 1:3 when he said God’s “divine power has granted to us everything pertaining to life and godliness, through the true knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and excellence.” The reality is that every resource belongs to us as Christians. We’re not lacking in anything. We don’t need anything that we don’t already have in our possession as believers who are “in Christ.” Just think about the content of your prayers and I think you’ll recognize how we don’t have our minds wrapped around just what has been given to us in Christ. John MacArthur wrote,

Many Christians continually ask God for what He has already given. They pray for Him to give them more love, although they should know that “the love of God has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us” (Rom. 5:5). They pray for peace, although Jesus said, “Peace I leave with you; My peace I give to you” (John 14:27). They pray for happiness and joy, although Jesus said, “These things I have spoken to you, that My joy may be in you, and that your joy may be made full” (John 15:11). They ask God for strength, although His Word tells them that they can do all things through him who strengthens” them (Phil. 4:13).

There’s no getting around it. We have a spiritual blank check from God. We have every resource at our disposal that we may “have life and have it abundantly” (John 10:10). It doesn’t mean we have all the physical resources we could ever want or need. This isn’t about that. This is about the resources you need to live and grow as a Christian so that you can stand in the very presence of God holy and blameless in love (Eph 1:4; cf. Jude 24), and so that despite whatever isn’t going right on this fallen rock we call earth, we can be sustained through the superabundant blessing of God so we can persevere to the very end and show ourselves as genuine believers (Jas 1:2-3).

In the end, there is no such thing as an unlimited blank check in this earthly life. Even Apple could eventually run out of money. But there is no way to exhaust the spiritual resources we have in Christ. As a Christian, we can add a resounding echo to David’s words in Psalm 23:1 when he says, “Yahweh is my shepherd, I do not lack.” No, no we do not.