I was nineteen years old and barely out of braces when I sat across the table from a woman four decades my senior. Serving globally was not yet on my radar, but I wanted to know Jesus and share my growing faith with others. Looking back now, almost 40 years later, I have shared her explanation of grace with many others and experienced its truth repeatedly in my own life. Grace can often be understood as “Operating Ability.”

A common thread can be seen in these definitions of grace from biblical scholars: a divine means of help or strength, enabling power, unmerited favor, and undeserved divine assistance. He gives what is needed for us to operate, do what He desires, and be what He wants us to be.

The apostle Paul asked God at least three times to remove his thorn in the flesh. God’s answer did not come as deliverance but as a promise. My grace is enough! God’s grace does more than save us and change our eternal future. It continues to shape and equip us, working in and through us daily.

Global workers can easily identify with Paul’s request for deliverance. We ask God to intervene during the repeated and grueling visa process, reminding Him (as if He could forget) that we are serving in our host countries in obedience to Him. We implore Him to give us shortcuts to language fluency, remove cultural barriers, and quiet the dogs that bark all night in our neighborhoods. When there are not enough teachers to run the school, electricity is unstable and limited, and loneliness visits too often, we ask God to step in. Our prayer lists become cluttered with things we ask God to take away or bestow. Because life on the field is not panning out as we thought it would. Like Paul, we want deliverance. God is certainly able to deliver and remove our thorns. However, often, His plan and what brings the most glory to Him is His provision of operating ability.

In his book Grace Happens Here, Max Lucado shares: “God dispenses his goodness not with an eyedropper but a fire hydrant. Your heart is a Dixie cup, and His grace is the Mediterranean Sea…Stretch yourself out in the hammock of grace. You can rest now.”