Sep 20, 2026 3-5pm ET
Sunday on The Robert Scott Bell Show:
This week on the Sunday Conversation, I’m once again reaching over to our new Saturday Conversations on PTL to share an episode that I believe deserves to be heard by our regular Robert Scott Bell Show audience. From time to time, we’re going to bring these PTL conversations here so those of you who haven’t yet joined us on Saturdays can hear what we’ve been doing. The PTL program gives me an opportunity to explore the intersection of health, healing, faith, personal responsibility and our relationship with God in a slightly different way, and this week’s conversation revolves around a deceptively simple question: Do you believe you’re worthy of healing?
That’s a question I’ve had to confront in my own life. I grew up immersed in the pharmaceutical model. My father was a pharmaceutical representative, my uncle was a medical doctor, and as a chronically ill kid I learned to look toward drugs, doctors and procedures whenever something went wrong. My parents loved me and did the best they knew to do, but none of us understood the role that nutrition, environmental exposures and other lifestyle factors might be playing in my health. Eventually, after years of suffering, my prayers for another way led me toward homeopathy, natural medicine, better nutrition and a completely different understanding of what healing could mean.
But asking for help and being willing to receive it are two different things. Sometimes we pray for an answer and then reject the answer because it doesn’t arrive in the packaging we expected. Maybe the person who shows up isn’t the kind of doctor we recognize. Maybe the recommendation sounds strange. Maybe it involves changing habits we don’t want to change. In my case, it meant hearing words like “homeopathy” and “organic” at a time when those ideas were nowhere near as familiar as they are today. I could have dismissed them because they didn’t fit the medical worldview I’d inherited. Instead, something told me to keep listening.
That leads to the deeper issue of identity. When you’ve lived with an illness or diagnosis long enough, is it possible to begin seeing it as part of who you are? “I have allergies.” “I have arthritis.” “I have this disease.” Eventually the diagnosis can become intertwined with our expectations for the future. I’m not suggesting that illness is imaginary or that someone can simply think away a serious disease. I’m asking whether our beliefs about what is possible can sometimes become another limitation. If healing were possible, would we recognize the opportunity? Would we believe ourselves worthy of pursuing it?
One of the most important lessons of my own recovery came from the homeopathic doctor who became my mentor. After a couple of years of changing my diet, cleaning up my lifestyle, using homeopathic remedies and doing the work he had taught me to do, I thanked him for healing me. His response was immediate: “I didn’t heal you. You healed yourself.” At first that sounded almost harsh. But he wanted me to understand that a healer can teach, guide and provide tools. He couldn’t make my choices for me. I had to apply what I’d learned. That realization permanently changed my understanding of what the word “doctor” should mean: not someone we surrender our health to, but ideally a teacher who helps us become more capable participants in our own healing.
Then comes one of the biggest barriers many of us encounter: “I can’t afford it.” I remember being 24 years old and being told I needed to start eating organic food. This was 1990. Organic food wasn’t sitting in every supermarket, and when I could find it, the price difference could be intimidating. I didn’t have much money, but I remembered what I’d been praying for. If this was part of the answer I’d been asking God to reveal, was I going to reject it solely because I couldn’t immediately see how the numbers would work?
I took that leap of faith and discovered something surprising. As I shifted my priorities, cooked more of my own food and spent less money elsewhere, the economics began looking very different. That’s why I challenge the assumption that investing in health is automatically unaffordable. It doesn’t mean every product, practitioner or therapy is worth the money, and it certainly doesn’t mean financial limitations aren’t real. It means we should examine our priorities before automatically deciding that something beneficial is impossible. As my friend Joel Salatin likes to put it, if you think good food is expensive, consider what chronic disease can cost.
That doesn’t mean we simply pray and wait for everything to be done for us either. I absolutely believe in prayer, providence and miracles. But I also believe we’re responsible for acting on what we learn. If I pray for healing and then receive guidance to change the food I’m eating, clean up my environment or abandon habits that are hurting me, I still have a role to play. Faith and personal responsibility don’t have to compete with each other. Sometimes taking responsibility is precisely how we respond to the answer we’ve been given.
I also spend some time introducing the PTL audience more deeply to homeopathy and the story of Samuel Hahnemann, the German physician who developed the system more than two centuries ago. His dissatisfaction with the often harsh medical practices of his era eventually led to the principle commonly summarized as “like cures like” and to the preparation methods that became central to homeopathy. Whether this is completely new to you or something you’ve used for years, my reason for discussing it is the same reason I talk about these subjects every day: I want people to know that there are ideas and approaches outside the conventional medical model so they can investigate them and make informed decisions for themselves.
Ultimately, though, this episode isn’t simply about homeopathy or organic food. It’s about belief, agency and worthiness. What do you believe about your body? What do you believe about your diagnosis? What do you believe about aging? What possibilities have you rejected because someone told you they were impossible? And perhaps most importantly, when you ask God for guidance, are you willing to remain open enough to recognize an answer that doesn’t look anything like the one you expected?
I don’t believe we’re here merely to survive, manage symptoms and slowly surrender our ability to participate in life. I want to remain strong enough to serve, love, teach, learn, laugh, work, worship and be present for the people God has placed in my life. That’s why this journey has never been only about getting rid of symptoms. It’s about becoming capable of fulfilling whatever mission and purpose we’ve been given.
So as we continue periodically sharing these PTL Saturday Conversations with our Sunday Conversation family, that’s the thought I want to leave with you: You can pray for healing, you can seek guidance and you can accept help, but don’t underestimate the role you have in the process. Believe that you’re worthy of pursuing better health, remain open to the answers that come, and then be willing to do the work.
God bless you and remember always: the power to heal is yours.
Remember Friends, The Power to Heal is Yours!
