Before I was a year old, doctors diagnosed me with Werdnig-Hoffman disease, also known as Spinal Muscular Atrophy (SMA). At that point, no known person with SMA had lived past the age of 12, and the doctors said I’d be lucky to live past my fifth birthday.

My parents were people of deep faith who had witnessed God’s miracles before, and I learned early in life that God—not man—has the final word.

While my genetic disorder meant I would never move my arms or legs myself and a wheelchair would forever be my only means of mobility, my parents refused to let a prognosis define my future. When they carried me out of the hospital, they prayed, “God, however long You give us with Howard, we will raise him in Your house as we have done with our other children.”

Because of that, I grew up believing I was just like everyone else. Once, a child told me their parents had warned them not to sit beside me because they might catch what I had.

What do I have? I wondered. I was just me. I mean, sure, I couldn’t walk or move my arms or even feed myself, but I had a cool chair, so what was the big deal? Looking back, many comments from that time crossed the line into cruelty, but I just thought all kids got picked on.

I loved being outside, but because I couldn’t use my hands or feet, I spent my time sitting on the sidelines while other kids played. But in those lonely moments, I talked with God. Other children had imaginary friends—I had Jesus.

And then, when I was five, my disease suddenly stopped progressing. My parents knew it was God’s intervention.

As a teenager, I got pneumonia and was in and out of the hospital. I also then needed major spinal surgery to implant two metal rods along my spine. Doctors said there was a 60 percent chance I’d die during surgery, but an even greater chance I’d die without it.

My father believed God would heal me without surgery. My mother believed God could heal me either way. They asked what I thought. I told them, “The same God who can heal me without the rods can heal me with the rods. I must do all I can.”

The day of surgery, as I was rolled into the operating room, the surgical team stepped out briefly. Suddenly, a man was standing at the foot of my bed. He touched the bed and said, “You’re going to be okay.” Peace flooded over me.

When the surgical team returned, they asked who I had been talking to. “There was a man here,” I said. They told me that was impossible; this was an operating room.

I woke in the ICU to the sound of a flatline. I opened my eyes and realized I was next to a baby fighting for his life. I later learned he had been abandoned. I prayed for him and fell asleep. When I woke again, the same man from the operating room sat in a rocking chair beside the baby’s bed. “Are you an angel?” I asked.

“It doesn’t matter who I am,” he replied. “What matters is whose I am.”

I asked if the baby would live. “Anything is possible,” the man replied, “if a person believes” (Mark 9:23 NLT).

I prayed and I believed (Matthew 21:22; Mark 11:24; 1 John 5:14–15) and two days later, as I was leaving the ICU, the baby’s mother came to visit. By then, the child’s heart had grown stronger. From that moment on, no one could convince me God was not real.

Because my lungs remained fragile, my family moved to the dry climate of Mesa, Arizona. This was, indeed, a fresh start for me—but not the one anyone expected.

It started innocently enough. A neighborhood kid asked me to deliver what he said was his mother’s pie to his cousin across town. He placed a foil-wrapped package in the backpack on my wheelchair, and I delivered it as requested. I did this several times before a school friend discovered what was inside.

“If this is pie,” he said, “you’re going to jail.” I had become a drug mule without even knowing it. When I told the gang I was done being their delivery service, they threatened my family and me.

Knowing that I had a high IQ, they forced me to manage their distribution records. I felt trapped and terrified. Every day I cried out, “God, if You can hear me, please get me out of this mess.”

One Sunday, my mother and I went to church in Phoenix. During the service, a woman stood and said, “There is someone here who has known God from an early age. God has delivered you from many situations, but the Lord says you’ve got a secret. Tonight, He will deliver you, but you must come to the altar.”

I waited for someone else to respond, but no one moved. I knew she was speaking to me. I went forward, and the pastor began to pray with me. I prayed, too, promising God I was willing to do whatever it took to be free.

And then I had a gallbladder attack. While I was recovering at home, gang members fired ice pellets through the window. These projectiles were designed to kill without a trace. But God protected us. At the exact moment one pellet would have struck my sister in the head, she bent down to pick something up. The next night, they hurled landscape rocks through our windows.

Frightened, I confessed everything to my parents. Almost immediately, we moved to another city, and eventually the gang forgot about me. But God was not just interested in delivering me out of a bad situation—He wanted to lead me into my purpose.

About a year later, while singing in the choir at church, I sensed the Lord urging me to give a message. I resisted, but the prompting overwhelmed me until finally, I spoke. Suddenly, the church erupted in worship. People began reporting miracles, including a woman whose tumor disappeared.

God had placed a calling on my life, but I wanted no part of ministry. I had watched my father make sacrifices as an associate pastor. I didn’t want that life.

But God would not let me go.

A month later, the pastor announced, “I think we should put Howard on the radio.” The church immediately took an offering and gave enough to keep me on the air for two years.

I named the broadcast More Than a Conqueror, which later became the title of my first book.

I graduated from high school and junior college as valedictorian before attending Arizona State University. In my twenties, I began ministering in juvenile detention centers.

Those young men and women had been through unimaginable pain, but through them God taught me something profound: we had all been given sentences. Theirs came from judges in black robes. Mine came from a doctor in a white coat.

But no sentence ever spoken over a person has the final authority. Only God’s Word does.

By the late 1990s, I was traveling and speaking across the Christian world. Then, a not-so-pleasant interaction occurred at a conference when a well-known minister and his entourage bumped into my wheelchair. The minister looked at me and snapped, “You need to watch where you’re going.”

His words cut deep and reopened years of rejection and humiliation I had unknowingly buried. The bitterness that filled me choked out my desire and willingness to continue in ministry.

I walked away from what God had called me to and started working in charter school administration, earning six figures. I also played semiprofessional poker. A far cry from what I had been doing.

On the outside, I appeared successful. I had every material thing I needed in life, but I was miserable. I felt unworthy of love and unseen. Then, in 2014, God brought me back to the knowledge of His goodness.

I went to work expecting an ordinary day, but by 11:00 a.m., I was in the ICU on life support and in a coma. While unconscious, I experienced people I had once known—some whose funerals I had preached—coming to sit beside me. They told me they would see me again.

Then I heard a voice ask, “Will you yield?”

I knew it was God. I woke up angry. “Yield?” I cried. “You’ve got some nerve! I can’t wipe my own nose or even go to the bathroom without help. What do You mean, will I yield?”

Upon leaving the hospital, I tried to return to my previous way of life, but everywhere I went, I kept hearing those same words: “Will you yield?”

God is so patient with His children.

Finally, God led me to Romans 12:1, where believers are called to present themselves as living sacrifices. The word present means to yield or surrender.

“Howard, many people come to Me because they want salvation or escape. But I desire a relationship where they willingly give Me their whole life,” I heard God say. “I want to use your body.”

Until that point, almost no one outside my family had seen me out of my wheelchair. The chair had become my shell. Inside it, I felt safe. Outside it, I felt exposed. But God kept asking me to yield. Finally, I said yes.

With my surrender, God showed me how I could use my body as an illustration of what it means to yield to Him. My caregiver became a living picture of daily surrender and trust, and together we illustrated the importance of relationships.

This message spread quickly across the nation. When I first took it into prisons, guards left their posts and fell to their knees in prayer.

And then COVID hit, and I found myself in yet another dark season. My caregiving situation had deteriorated, and I was sure I was destined for isolation in an assisted living facility. I wanted to give up.

Still, I’d promised God I would finish writing my book, Yielded. So I posted online, asking for help developing and editing the project. Many people responded, and I scheduled a video call.

During our meeting, I noticed a woman whose outward beauty and inward anointing took my breath.

“Now that’s a woman of God,” I thought. Immediately, I heard the Lord say, “That’s your wife.” I’d long given up on the idea of a wife, but I took God at His Word and trusted He’d give her the same message.

Not long afterward, I was preaching in Phoenix when my caregiver showed me a Facebook message. It was from Tiffany, the woman from that meeting.

She wrote, “Man of God, you really poured into the people tonight. Has anyone given you a glass of water? Make sure you rest and take care of yourself.”

I smiled and thought, That’s not the comment of a friend. That’s one of a wife.

God supernaturally confirmed His plan to both of us. And soon, Tiffany left South Carolina with her daughter and moved to Arizona. (See her story on page 27.)

The day they arrived, chaos erupted in my home. As I mentioned, I was living in a very unhealthy environment. But Tiffany walked through the storm with a peace and wisdom developed through years of ministry.

We were married soon after. I had always wanted to leave a legacy through children. Through Tiffany, God not only gave me a wife, but also a daughter. God does give us the desires of our hearts when we follow Him (Psalm 37:4).

But Tiffany’s daughter was cautious, and rightfully so. “If you’re still here in eight months,” she told me, “I might trust you.” That was in 2022. Now, she calls me Dad.
Looking back, the greatest miracle isn’t God giving me my wife or daughter. It’s not my surviving a death sentence or escaping gangs.

No, it is God’s relentless pursuit of me, His son. From my very first breath, the Lord pursued me with His goodness (Psalm 23:6).

He has been pursuing you with His goodness, too. Will you yield?

Yielding to God is not a one-time decision made in a moment of crisis. It is a daily posture of trust—of laying your ear on His chest and listening for His heartbeat, of waking up each morning and saying, “Here I am, Lord. Use me. All of me.”

I am proof that if you give Him your whole being, He will use and bless you in ways you never imagined. Yes, there will still be battles, even frightening sentences that the world hands down, but every challenge presents another invitation to trust God more deeply and to see Him work on your behalf.

God has promised to meet your every need (Philippians 4:19). His love will never fail you (1 Corinthians 13:8). So what are you waiting for?

Place your whole self in His hands. Let Him make you and mold you into the person He created you to be.

He has an incredible purpose for your life. Yield, and you’ll discover it.

Consider: What sentence has been spoken over your life? How has it affected your view of yourself, your situation, and God? What does the Bible say about you and your situation? Is there an unhealed wound you are still carrying? How might it be causing harm? Who or what are you yielding to each day?

DR. HOWARD BELL co-leads Yielded Life Ministries with his wife, Tiffany. He is a speaker and the author of the book, Yielded: The Posture of True Love. Howard’s book is now available on Amazon and in most prison chapel libraries across the US.