Overcoming Obstacles

[Christsfreeservant]

“But He gives a greater grace. Therefore it says, ‘God is opposed to the proud, but gives grace to the humble.’” (James 4:6 NASB1995)​

I was in third grade in elementary school. I was called to a meeting of adults in the basement of the school. They asked me if my parents ever fought. Next thing I recall is that I was sent back to second grade. They said I was not ready for third grade. I didn’t know it then but I had difficulty with reading comprehension, which no one tried to correct. And I did poorly in any school subjects that required reading. And I graduated high school with a 1.4 GPA (D average), and I started college reading on a fourth grade level.

In college I did well in my music classes, but anything involving reading I did poorly in, again. I did take a class to help me in my reading, and I did get up to 7th grade level. After about 3 years of college I realized I was not going to be able to graduate, and so I took a typing class, and I got a clerical job. Then I got married, and we started a family, and so now all my work was either at home, or it was volunteer work in the church gatherings (usually clerical work or in music), or in the community, or at my children’s schools.

My father told me once that he could probably find something to talk about with me, “even though you are not as intelligent as my other children.” And I had pastors who criticized me because of my love for the Lord, and because of my desire to serve the Lord with my life, and because I stood on the truth of God’s word, and I would not compromise truth, and I would not tell lies. One pastor told me he was warned about people like me, i.e. “people with strong convictions,” and he wanted me to let him be God’s voice to me.

Throughout my life I kept getting the “smack down.” Sometimes I felt like a basketball being continually slam dunked into the hoop, or like someone drowning who was pushed down underneath the water with the intention to drown me and to silence me. Satan was fighting very hard against me to destroy my life and to keep me silent and to dishearten and to discourage me so that I would run away and give up. And there were times when I did, in fact, run away and give up. But God didn’t give up on me. He had a plan.

And get this! God took a woman, then of 54 years old, who had poor reading comprehension, who had been rejected over and over, and told that she was a nothing and that she was to shut up and to follow man’s ways of doing things. And he called me to his service. And he had me reading all kinds of news articles and historical and medical and scientific articles which I would never have imagined myself comprehending, for he was showing me my world so that I would have an idea of what is going on in the world today.

And he had me reading the Scriptures from beginning to end, over and over again, and writing about passages of Scripture I would never have comprehended before. And he was making the word of God practical and applicable to our world today. And then he had me start writing songs (never done this before) and poems (not like any I had ever written before) and doing video talks (I’m not a public speaker) and making Christian memes, and giving testimonies, and none of this was possible in my own flesh!!

And all this was God’s grace to me! All of this was God doing in my life all that I would never even have thought of or dreamed of doing ever, and all that I would never have imagined possible. The proud? They put me down. They rejected me. They cast me aside as worthless and not worth their time. And many of them still do. But God humbled me through those experiences, and he taught me to depend on him in all things, and to believe him, that he could do with me and in me what I would never have thought possible EVER!

So, the Lord is leading me to write this today to encourage anyone reading this that our God is the God of the impossible, and he can do in the lives of those who humble themselves before him what they would never have imagined possible for them to do, because so many people treated them as though they were not worth their time, as though they would never amount to anything. But God chose the despised and the unappreciated and the weak and the rejected to shame the strong.. (see 1 Corinthians 1:26-31)

An Original Work / January 26, 2026
Christ’s Free Servant, Sue J Love