Everything For Life Is Already Yours

Serge Da Rosa
Aug 16
18 min read

There are statements throughout Scripture that we have become so familiar with that I wonder if we have ever allowed ourselves to consider what life would actually look like if we believed them. We quote them, teach them, sing about them, and build theology around them, but sometimes our actual way of living reveals that we have never really let the words mean what they say.

Peter writes that God's divine power “has given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness” (2 Peter 1:3). Paul says that in Christ “all the fullness of the Godhead” dwells bodily and then immediately says, “and you are complete in Him” (Colossians 2:9–10). Jesus tells his disciples, “Do not fear, little flock, for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom” (Luke 12:32). Paul says we have been blessed “with every spiritual blessing” (Ephesians 1:3), and elsewhere he writes, “all things are yours” (1 Corinthians 3:21–23).

There is an incredible finality in that language. Given! Complete! Every! All! The kingdom is not presented as something the Father reluctantly releases after we have prayed enough, believed enough, matured enough, or demonstrated that we can be trusted with it. Jesus says it was the Father's good pleasure to give it.

Yet much of our lives have been built around the assumption that something is still missing. We may confess fullness while approaching life from lack. We may say the kingdom is ours while continually waiting for the kingdom to come. We may declare that Christ is within us while praying as though the resources of divine Life remain somewhere outside of us. We may believe that everything pertaining to life and godliness has been given while spending most of our lives trying to acquire what we believe we still lack.

This is bigger than a theological disagreement because it shapes the way we actually live. If I believe something essential is missing, I will build my life around trying to obtain it. If I believe Life itself is already present and that nothing necessary for the expression of that Life is absent from me, I will encounter the world from an entirely different place.

A Life Organized Around Lack

For many of us, lack has been so deeply embedded in our spiritual imagination that we hardly recognize it anymore. We have been taught to begin with what we do not have. We need more faith. We need more power. We need more peace. We need more of God. We need a greater anointing. We need heaven to open. We need God to show up. We need the kingdom to come. We need God to send something from where He is into the situation where we are.

There are several assumptions operating together here, and I think it is helpful to distinguish them. Distance says, “God is there and I am here.” Separation says, “God, or what I need from God, is not present here.” Lack says, “Something necessary for Life is still missing from me.” They often reinforce one another, but they are not exactly the same thing.

This is important because someone can move beyond the idea of separation while continuing to live from lack. We can sincerely believe God lives within us and still imagine ourselves as spiritually under-resourced. We can talk about union and continue approaching God as the One who possesses everything we need while we remain the ones who do not possess it.

In that sense, separation asks, “How do I get to God?” Lack asks, “How do I get from God what I don't have?” Union confronts the first question, but fullness confronts the second.

If Peter's words are true, perhaps we need to allow them to disrupt this entire arrangement. He does not say that divine power will eventually give us everything pertaining to life and godliness. He says it has given us all things. Jesus does not say that someday it will be the Father's pleasure to give us a kingdom. He speaks of something being given in the moment.

The question then becomes unavoidable. What does life look like when lack is no longer our starting point, not only in the way we pray, but in the way we actually live?

Living Toward Life or Living From Life

There is a tremendous difference between living toward something and living from something. Much of what we have called spiritual life has been about moving toward what we believe God has promised. We are becoming whole, becoming complete, becoming united, becoming equipped, becoming spiritual, becoming kingdom people. Life always seems to be somewhere slightly ahead of us.

That keeps us constantly reaching for something we believe is missing. We can spend our lives trying to acquire enough money to feel secure, enough approval to feel valuable, enough knowledge to feel equipped, enough spiritual experience to feel connected, enough faith to feel powerful, enough healing to feel whole, or enough revelation to finally feel ready. The object changes, but the underlying consciousness remains the same. Something essential is missing.

We end up living toward Life rather than from Life. We are continually trying to become what we already are, receive what has already been given, enter what we are already in, and acquire what Scripture says is already ours.

But if everything pertaining to life and godliness has already been given, then perhaps the movement is not from lack into fullness. Fullness is where we begin. Union is not the destination of the journey. Union is the starting point. The kingdom is not the reward waiting at the end of our spiritual development. The kingdom is what has already been given, and we are learning what it looks like to live from it here and now.

That does not mean every external circumstance presently looks healthy. It does not mean we possess every object we could ever desire, and it certainly does not require us to pretend pain, hunger, sickness, grief, financial difficulty, relational fracture, or uncertainty do not exist. Jesus never appeared to live in denial of the world around him.

What I see instead is that Jesus never allowed the condition he encountered to determine what was available to him.

Jesus Did Not Take His Reality From the Circumstance

This is one of the things that has been capturing my attention when I look at the life of Jesus. He continually walked into situations that appeared completely contrary to the kingdom he embodied. He encountered sickness, death, hunger, storms, scarcity, rejection, shame, fear, oppression and human impossibility. Yet I cannot find Jesus stopping in those moments to construct a theology around why the kingdom was apparently absent.

He never seems to say, “I know what God promised, but look at what is happening in my life.” He never explains the contradiction by saying, “We possess this spiritually, but not physically.” He never appears to approach a situation through an “already but not yet” consciousness in which the fullness of Life belongs partly to the present and partly to another age. Instead, he encounters whatever stands before him from the Life he already possesses.

Consider the feeding of the multitude. The disciples look at the crowd and immediately begin calculating what is lacking. They see the number of people, the amount of food available, and the impossibility of the situation. Their conclusion makes perfect sense according to what is visible. There is not enough.

Jesus sees the same crowd. He sees the same bread. He knows exactly how many people are there. He is not denying mathematics, and he is not pretending five loaves are five thousand loaves. Yet the visible amount does not establish the boundaries of what is possible.

There is a difference between recognizing what is presently in front of me and allowing what is presently in front of me to define what is available. “There are five loaves” describes a condition. “Therefore, there cannot be enough” allows the condition to determine possibility.

Jesus acknowledges what is there without becoming governed by what appears to be missing. The circumstance contains information, but it does not get to define Life.

The Circumstance Does Not Tell Me What I Possess

This may be one of the most significant changes that happens when we begin living from fullness. The circumstance no longer becomes the measuring stick for our inheritance.

A difficult financial season does not tell me whether I possess Life. A diagnosis does not tell me whether Life is present. An unanswered question does not tell me whether wisdom is available. Chaos around me does not tell me whether peace exists within me. The fact that I cannot presently see a way forward does not establish that there is no way forward.

This is not denial. In fact, I think it allows us to look at circumstances more honestly because we no longer have to be afraid of what they might say about God or about us.

Lazarus really died. The multitude really was hungry. The storm really was violent. People really were sick. Jesus did not need to rename those conditions in order to maintain his confidence in Life. He could acknowledge exactly what was happening without allowing what was happening to define the resources available to him.

A circumstance may reveal what appears to be lacking around me without getting to tell me what is lacking within me. That means I can lay the entire situation on the table without fear. I can look at it honestly, acknowledge what is unhealthy, recognize what needs attention, and still refuse to interpret the condition as evidence that Life is absent.

That changes the question I bring into the situation. Instead of beginning with, “What am I missing?” I can begin asking, “What does Life look like here, and how do I engage with Life in what is before me?”

This Changes Prayer, But It Changes Much More Than Prayer

Prayer is one of the places where this shift can feel especially disruptive. I have experienced this myself. When so much of your prayer life has been constructed around asking God for what you believe you lack, embracing fullness can initially make prayer difficult. You almost have to learn prayer again because the assumptions that once gave prayer its structure are disappearing.

If prayer has always meant reaching toward God for something you do not possess, what happens when you no longer believe God is distant and you no longer believe you are lacking? If prayer has been the mechanism for getting heaven to supply earth, what happens when you begin recognizing that the kingdom has already been given and Life is already present?

The old vocabulary starts falling apart. We have prayed for God to come, prayed for more of God, prayed for His presence to arrive, prayed for peace, prayed for power, prayed for heaven to open, and prayed for the kingdom to enter situations where we believed it was missing.

Those prayers make perfect sense inside a worldview of distance, absence and lack. But if I am one with divine Life, if I am the dwelling place of Spirit, if the kingdom has been given, and if everything pertaining to life and godliness is already mine, then prayer begins arising from another place entirely.

Prayer becomes less about acquiring and more about communion, awareness, participation, expression and discovery. Instead of trying to get God into the situation, I begin with the recognition that there is nowhere I can go where God is not. Instead of begging for peace as though peace exists somewhere outside of me, I begin discovering what the peace I already possess looks like within this situation.

This does not eliminate prayer. It frees prayer from deficiency.

There is something fascinating about Jesus at the tomb of Lazarus. Before Lazarus walks out, Jesus says, “Father, I thank You that You have heard Me. And I know that You always hear Me” (John 11:41–42). His posture is not desperation. He is not attempting to get the Father's attention. There is an awareness of uninterrupted communion before the visible circumstance changes.

We see something similar when Jesus receives the loaves. In the presence of what appears insufficient, he gives thanks (John 6:11). Thanksgiving is not merely his response after abundance appears. Thanksgiving precedes the visible multiplication. Perhaps thanksgiving is much larger than religious gratitude after God gives us something. It can be the response of someone who refuses to allow apparent insufficiency to establish an internal consciousness of lack.

Yet this reaches far beyond prayer. It changes the way I walk into a difficult conversation, the way I respond to financial pressure, the way I approach relationships, the way I create, the way I give, the way I rest, the way I respond to uncertainty, and the way I encounter something that appears unhealthy. I am no longer continually asking life to tell me what I possess.

The Governance of Life

This is where the language of governance has become increasingly meaningful to me, but I want to be careful with what I mean by it. Religious language around kingdom, authority and rule has often carried the imagination of hierarchy, control, domination and power over others. That is not what I mean by governance.

Jesus himself confronted that understanding of power. He told his disciples that the rulers of the nations “lord it over” people and exercise authority over them, and then said, “Yet it shall not be so among you” (Mark 10:42–43). Whatever kingdom governance looks like through Jesus, domination cannot be its defining character.

When I speak of governance, I am talking about something much more life-giving. Governance means I can take the situation in front of me, lay it honestly on the table, see it for what it is, and ask how we govern what is before us in a way that brings health.

What brings Life here? What brings peace here? What brings clarity here? What brings reconciliation here? What response moves this toward health rather than further dysfunction? What does Love look like in this situation? What does wisdom look like? What possibilities become visible when I refuse to begin from lack?

This is not forcing a situation to submit to me. It is not exercising spiritual control over people or circumstances. It is certainly not walking around declaring my authority over everything that does not look the way I think it should look. That can become another expression of fear and control wearing kingdom language.

The governance of Life is not about power over something. It is about how we care for what is before us.

I think we can see this repeatedly in Jesus. When thousands are hungry, he governs the situation toward nourishment. When a woman is surrounded by accusation and shame, he governs the situation toward dignity and freedom. When his disciples are arguing about greatness, he does not establish his superiority by reminding them of his position. He washes their feet and shows them another way of being together. When a dangerous storm arises, Jesus calls it into identity by saying, “Peace be still”.

The situation becomes different because of the quality of Life brought into it. That is the kind of governance I am talking about.

What Is This Situation Becoming Under the Care of Life?

This gives us a very practical way of thinking about kingdom. Instead of immediately reaching for words like authority, rule and power, perhaps we can speak of the kingdom as the governance of Life.

What happens to people, relationships, communities and circumstances when Life governs?

Chaos can move toward peace. Something fractured can move toward health. Scarcity can give way to generosity. Hostility can become conversation. Confusion can become clarity. Shame can become dignity. Something neglected can become cared for.

None of this requires domination. In fact, domination usually produces the opposite. Control can produce compliance, but it rarely produces health. And from what I've seen, control eventually produces rebellion. Fear can modify behavior, but it does not create freedom. Force can create order on the surface while leaving everything underneath untouched.

Healthy governance asks a different question. It asks what this situation could become under the care of Life. That word care matters to me because it keeps governance relational. I am not standing over the situation as its conqueror. I am participating in what Life can bring forth within it.

This is where testimony becomes much larger as well. Testimony does not have to mean that we waited for God to supernaturally fix something from outside of us. The testimony can be what the situation became under the care of Life.

Something unhealthy became healthy. What is fractured became whole. Something that was chaotic became peaceful. Domination by fear became a place where love could breathe again. Something that looked impossible became a place where creativity discovered another way.

That is testimony.

Moving Beyond Objective and Subjective

This is also why I have increasingly struggled with the language of “objective” and “subjective” when discussing finished work and fullness. I understand what people are attempting to communicate with those categories. Usually the idea is that something is objectively true in Christ even though it has not yet become subjectively true in our experience.

But I wonder if that distinction can quietly preserve the very illusion of lack we are trying to escape.

We say objectively everything is ours, but subjectively it is not. Objectively we are whole, but subjectively we are waiting for wholeness. Objectively we possess fullness, but subjectively we are trying to experience it. Objectively the kingdom has come, but subjectively we are still waiting for its manifestation.

In this vein of thought, lack has not disappeared. We have simply found another category in which to place it.

The words may have changed, but the same perception of God can remain underneath them. Instead of heaven and earth, it becomes objective and subjective. Instead of spiritual and physical, it becomes positional and experiential. Instead of saying, “God has it and I need to get it,” we say, “It is objectively mine, but I still need to appropriate it subjectively.” Either way, we remain waiting for Life.

Governance gives me a different way of understanding what is happening. I do not need something to move from an objective realm into a subjective realm before it becomes real. I possess Life, and now I encounter whatever condition stands before me from that Life.

I can lay the situation on the table exactly as it is without allowing it to define what I possess. The question becomes what we do with what is before us. How do we care for this? How do we respond? What brings health? What does Love do here? What does wisdom see? What possibilities are present that lack could not see?

A situation can need transformation without me becoming a person of lack.

Manifestation Is Not Merely Something We Wait For

This also makes me question some of the ways we talk about manifestation. We can say, “I possess it, but I am waiting for it to manifest,” and unknowingly create another future destination. We have fullness, but we are still waiting for fullness to become visible enough before we consider it real. But perhaps manifestation is already happening in the way Life moves through us.

When peace moves through me in the middle of chaos, Life is being manifested. When love shapes my response to hostility, Life is being manifested. When generosity emerges where scarcity would normally create fear, Life is being manifested. When creativity discovers possibility in something that looked impossible, Life is being manifested. When I bring health into something unhealthy, reconciliation into something fractured, or clarity into confusion, Life is expressing itself through me.

We do not have to wait for every circumstance to change before kingdom Life becomes visible.

This is where the words of Jesus about rivers of living water become beautiful to me. Jesus said, “He who believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water” (John 7:38). The imagery is not of an empty humanity standing beneath heaven waiting to be continually filled from somewhere else. The movement is outward. Life flows.

Perhaps that is one of the clearest pictures of what it means to live from fullness. We are not continually waiting for Life to arrive. We are discovering how Life moves through us into whatever stands before us.

What If Nothing Necessary for Life Is Missing?

This is where the conversation moves beyond theology and into Monday morning. What would actually change if I woke up tomorrow without beginning the day with an unconscious inventory of what I lack?

What if I did not begin with not enough money, not enough opportunity, not enough knowledge, not enough strength, not enough time, not enough faith, not enough connection with God, not enough spiritual power, or not enough resources, not enough energy? What if my starting point was that nothing necessary for the expression of Life is absent from me?

That does not mean I personally know everything. Living from fullness doesn't mean you have everything figured out. There will still be things I do not know, which means there is still discovery, listening, learning, conversation, wisdom and growth. Union does not eliminate communion. It removes distance from communion.

I can still ask questions without asking them as a deficient person. I can seek wisdom without believing wisdom is somewhere far away from me. I can learn from someone else without believing their possession of knowledge diminishes me. I can receive help without making help evidence of my incompleteness. I can encounter something I have never experienced before without interpreting uncertainty as a deficiency.

This is where Life becomes incredibly expansive because I am no longer spending all of my energy trying to complete myself.

Life Meets What Is Before Us

There is something else I see in Jesus that feels essential to this conversation. Jesus did not merely survive environments that were contrary to Life. He brought something into them.

Where something was unhealthy, health emerged. Where there was exclusion, belonging appeared. Where shame had defined someone, dignity was restored. Where scarcity seemed to establish the limits, abundance appeared. Where death seemed to have the final word, Life spoke.

Jesus was not standing outside these circumstances wondering how they could exist if the kingdom were present. He entered them from the kingdom.

Perhaps we have spent too much time asking why circumstances do not look like the kingdom and not enough time discovering what it means to live from the kingdom while standing right in the middle of those circumstances.

This does not mean we conquer circumstances through force. Life does not have to imitate the systems of domination in order to transform something. Love does not need to become in your face, aggressive or violent to prove it is strong. Peace does not need to overpower chaos to be peace. Health does not need to condemn what is unhealthy in order to bring healing.

We simply bring the quality of Life we possess into what is before us and begin asking how this can be cared for in a way that produces something different.

The presence of something unhealthy does not prove the absence of Life. It becomes a place where Life can move. The presence of chaos does not prove peace is absent. It becomes a place where peace can be expressed. The presence of scarcity does not establish that we are lacking. It becomes a place where we can discover possibilities scarcity could never imagine.

Jesus called himself “the resurrection and the life” while standing in front of a tomb (John 11:25). He did not wait for Lazarus to walk out before knowing what Life was.

A Different Way of Being Human

Maybe the deepest shift here is not learning how to use spiritual principles more effectively. I am not interested in replacing one religious formula with another. This is not about finding the correct confession, saying the right words, maintaining a sufficiently positive mindset, declaring authority over circumstances, or learning a technique that guarantees the outcome we desire.

It is about discovering a different way of being human.

What does a human being look like who no longer shapes life around deficiency? What happens when someone actually believes that union is the starting point, fullness is present, the kingdom has been given, and everything pertaining to Life and godliness is already available?

I think that person begins moving through the world differently. They can encounter need without becoming governed by need. They can encounter fear without allowing fear to determine their response. They can enter chaos carrying peace rather than asking chaos for permission to have peace. They can face impossibility without allowing impossibility to define what Life can do. They can pray without trying to overcome distance. They can give without being governed by scarcity. They can love without needing another person's response to complete them.

They can lay a situation on the table and see it honestly without being intimidated by what they see. They do not need to dominate it, control it, deny it, or spiritually overpower it. They can simply ask what the governance of Life looks like here.

Maybe it looks like patience. Maybe it looks like generosity. Maybe it looks like listening. Maybe it looks like creativity, courage, forgiveness, a boundary, a conversation, rest, action, wisdom, or simply refusing to reproduce the chaos that has been handed to us.

The governance is revealed in how we handle what is before us. This is not about getting everything under our control. It is about discovering what everything can become under the care of Life.

And perhaps this is where the conversation has been leading me all along. I am becoming less interested in asking how to get God to give me what I need and increasingly interested in discovering what it means to live from everything that has already been given. I am less interested in explaining why circumstances seem contrary to the kingdom and more interested in discovering how someone who possesses the kingdom encounters those circumstances.

Prayer changes inside of that, but so does everything else. Relationships change. Decisions change. Our response to adversity changes. The way we see ourselves changes. The way we interpret circumstances changes. Even the way we imagine possibility changes.

I no longer have to approach Life asking what I am missing. I can enter the moment asking what Life looks like here, how Love moves here, what health looks like here, what peace looks like here, and how we care for what is before us in a way that allows something beautiful and whole to emerge.

Those are not questions asked from emptiness. They are questions of discovery.

Maybe that is what fullness looks like when it becomes a way of life. We stop waiting for circumstances to prove that we possess the kingdom and begin discovering what happens to circumstances, relationships, communities, and ultimately the world around us when they encounter people who are no longer governed by lack.

The question I find myself sitting with now is not whether we possess all things pertaining to Life and godliness. Scripture seems remarkably clear about that. The question is what kind of humanity emerges when we actually live knowing nothing necessary for Life is missing, and what might the world around us become under the care of that Life?

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If this essay resonated with you, don't let the conversation end here. Urban Eden is more than a collection of articles—it's an ongoing journey of exploring identity, seeing God more clearly, and engaging life more fully.

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Serge is an author, minister, podcast host, and the founder of Urban Eden Community. his passion is helping people see God more clearly, awaken to who they are, and engage life more fully. Through essays, conversations, books, and community, his hope is to create spaces where people can ask honest questions and discover the life that's already present within them.

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