Bible Studies

Learning Disabled Part 1

by Doug Laird 
09/25/26
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In the secular realm, being “learning disabled” refers to having a neurological disorder impacting one’s ability to process information, usually evidenced by difficulty in such things as basic reading skills.

Individuals with learning disabilities can have average or above average intelligence. There are different types of learning disabilities, most often detected in early stages of social interaction and secular schooling.

There are other physical conditions such as vision and hearing impairments that can impact the educational progress of individuals, as well.

It is important, therefore, to accurately identify what the learning disability, if there is one, actually is. Physical illnesses and adversity in one’s personal life can account for one progressing at a slower rate, or a sudden decline in one’s ability to focus.

Children can be brutally insensitive, with some enjoying making fun of fellow students who have learning disabilities and or physical limitations. This can be a great distraction, as they sit in fear of being called upon to perform a function with which they are having difficulty, such as reading aloud, or performing a function for which they do not have the required gross or fine motor skills to perform.

Educators and administrators need to be aware of this, and take whatever steps they can, to address such abusive cruelty taking place in the classroom, gymnasium, or on campus.

Parents should be a great source of comfort, acceptance, and assurance. Parents should also be wise enough to prepare their children who have learning and physical disabilities for the inevitable pressure and abuse that “being different” is going to generate when they go out into the real world.

Children and adults with learning and physical disabilities must learn not to allow abuse from ignorant and or insensitive peers and commenters to lower their self-esteem. Such feelings of inadequacy and insecurity will in fact impede their forward progress, and often prevent them from reaching their maximum potential in all areas of life.

It is often individuals that have learning and physical disabilities that go on to become educators and advocates for others experiencing the same conditions. People with learning disabilities must discover and be reminded of their own self-worth in the eyes of God.

They must learn how to deal with others who would have them think less of themselves.

God the Father loved you enough to sacrifice His only Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, to atone for your sin and provide you with the means for your individual salvation (1John 1: 2). We often only see the crucifixion in the big picture, but can fail to take note that He had each one of us individually in mind when He made that atonement on the cross. God the Father crushed Him (Isa. 53: 5), placing the weight of the entire world’s sin debt on His bleeding humanity.

He endured the cross to atone for the world’s sin debt, including the sin debt of the individual we face in the mirror.

As sinners, James 2: 10 places all of us in the same boat, and in equal need of salvation.

As born-again believers, we all have equal opportunity to identify and to execute the individual post salvation spiritual life that God has in mind. When Matt.10: 30 speaks of the hairs on our individual head being numbered, it is making reference to His knowledge and concern for even the smallest details of our individual lives. Recognizing this is what builds intimacy in what should be, our personal relationship and walk with Him.

There may be many things that we can’t do that others can do, but there is nothing that we can’t do that God desires for us to do in the individual plan that He has in mind.

We are not here to be someone or something else other than who and what God created us to be. He knew full well of all the circumstances, home, socio-economic, and political environment, as well as the mental and physical abilities and limitations that we would encounter, as a result of the body HE chose to place us in at birth.

Our biological parents reproduced what would become our body at birth, but it was God who created our soul and placed us in the body of His choosing (John 3: 6).

God has given us (or will give us) all that we need to complete the individual plan that He has in mind for us (Phil. 4: 1). But we must be willing to do our part, if we are to become all that He wants us to be!

I know of a local Special-Ed STUDENT who later became a Special Ed TEACHER in the same public school system.

I know of a girl who came into this world severely handicapped, who has spent years of her life assisting severely-wounded returning veterans, and advocating for accommodations being made for handicapped individuals to gain access into buildings, in order to obtain the same services that most of us take for granted.

Our different interests, talents, and limitations are what God uses to place His ambassadors among people with similar interests and circumstances, in order to open the doors of opportunity for an advancing disciple to evangelize or edify the souls with whom they provide practical, secular services or share the same activities. Unbelievers and non-Christians can engage in the same areas of practical service and actvities, but the advancing disciple is there with a higher objective (Matt. 28: 19, 20) in mind, when God gives them the opportunity (1Pet.3: 15).

The very thing that prevented one from pursuing or continuing on with his or her OWN plans, can turn out to be the means that opened the door for one to discover his or her spiritual niche.

One’s spiritual niche involves the discovery, development, and execution of the individual spiritual gift (1Cor.12: 7,11) that contributes to the evangelization and edification of OTHERS, wherever he or she is, 24/7.

Once discovered and developed, it will become the driving force impacting the rest of one’s post salvation spiritual life.

Learning the source of the disability, and the means to either overcome or to adjust to it, are essential to making the best out of whatever circumstances that we are born into, or that come our way throughout the course of our lifetime.

Many things can happen that will alter or cancel the plans that we (or others) had in mind for ourselves, but nothing can happen that can change the individual plan that God has in mind for the one we see in the mirror.

But before one can learn of it, or do anything else in the spiritual realm, one must address the spiritually disabled condition with which we all come into this world.

“I am the vine, you are the branches; the one who remains in Me and I in him bears much fruit, for apart from Me, you can do nothing (John 15: 5).”

End of Part 1