14. Two Forces Competing With Your Faith

I recently asked myself: What are the biggest obstacles that stand in our way to grow in our Christian faith?

The answer was simple yet profound. Take a listen to this episode of Heal The Healers and discover what holds you back in your faith as a Christian Physician.

In this episode of 'Heal the Healers' podcast, host Inga Hofmann, a pediatric oncologist and hematologist, discusses the two major barriers that hinder spiritual growth in our Christian faith: unwillingness to sacrifice time and unwillingness to deal with discomfort. She explains how these obstacles can be overcome by dedicating more time to God's word, prayer, and time with Him and being willing to step out of your comfort zone for personal and spiritual development. She highlights the importance of never becoming too comfortable with your understanding of God and the need to continuously learn and grow in faith. 

00:00 Introduction and Welcome

00:03 The Importance of Spiritual Growth

01:54 The Two Forces Competing Against Our Spiritual Growth

05:19 The Importance of Time and Sacrifice in Spiritual Growth

11:33 The Challenge of Being Uncomfortable in Spiritual Growth

17:02 Practical Examples of Sacrifice and Discomfort

23:18 Conclusion and Invitation to the Heal the Healers Mentorship Program

Mentioned in this episode:
Episode 13: Your Spiritual Growth: Milk versus Steak?

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Transcript

0:00

Well, hello there. Welcome. It's so good to see you today. I wanna talk about a very important topic we pick up from last week. There are two things that really hold you back and your Christian faith and your spiritual growth, and we encounter all of them each and every one of us. I want you to really tune in and listen to those because I think it's really gonna help you grow in your spiritual journey and your. Faith in the things of God. So let's talk about this right after the music. Welcome to the Heal the Healers podcast, where we explore the intersection of faith and medicine. Discover your God-given potential and experience Christ's healing in the midst of medical burnout. I'm your host, Inga Hoffman, a pediatric key mock doc, physician, coach, and follow of Jesus. Together we will navigate the challenges of medicine, integrate faith into our personal and professional lives. Experience, spiritual renewal and find restoration in Christ. Welcome to the Heal the Healers, where Christ heals one physician and one patient at a time. Well, welcome back to another episode of Heal the Healers. I'm Inga Hoffman, your host. I'm a pediatric oncologist, a hematologist, and really passionate about the things of Christ. I'm passionate about helping other physicians bring back their faith and integrated. Into their life as a physician in full force. And last week we talked about the topic of really getting serious with God getting back into your spiritual growth, but in taking the things of God serious. So if you have not listened to that episode and was a little bold and hopefully encouraged, but also ruffled some feathers in a good way. This week I wanna really pick up on that and I wanna talk about two forces that are usually competing against our spiritual growth. So there's two things that each and every one of us faces or battles that stand in the way of growing on the things of God in our faith and developing as a mature. Christian physician and this is gonna be critical. And I think when we are aware of things, they really help us to then grow and take them, push those obstacles to the side so we can really step forward. Into growth. Now, before I go into all the details, I wanna thank you number one for tuning in and listening. Really appreciate it. Also, if you could do me a favor, just subscribe to the show and then share it with others. If you're watching on YouTube, give me a thumbs up that really helps visibility to others, share with other friends and colleagues via the link sharing. And if you're listening on the podcast episode also, yeah, you leave a review that. Would really help and sharing it with your friends. Thank you so much. Remember, you can follow on YouTube, on Facebook, on any podcast platform, and we bring the episode to you. So without further ado, just jump into today's episode to talk about these two competing forces that are competing directly with your spiritual growth. And this is kind of a funny story, how this came up honestly, because a couple weeks ago I was standing in my kitchen and I was doing some cleaning and, and just scrubbing the counters and those kind of things. And sometimes when I'm by myself and I do these physical things, sometimes I start praying. I pray for people. I pray I talk to God and what is in my mind what is in my heart. And I was really grieved a bit over what I shared actually last week, that we have gotten so far away. We drifted so much from the things of God and I'm like, God, why? And I just groan in it and, and suddenly. I cannot explain it any other ways. These words just spilled out to me and really gave me revelation about the two core things that are in our way to grow in our spiritual journey in the things of God. And I wanna share those with you today. Now some of them you might be like, that's not so surprising. But I want you to listen with a fresh eye and really get it into your mind, not only here in your head, into your intellectual brain, but also in your heart, and really let it be a variation to you and to your personal life so that you can say. Lord, I recognize this pattern, but help me now to make changes because I'm not here to entertain you. This is not for entertainment purposes. If it entertains you, great, but that's not really the goal. The goal is though, that you take a piece and now say, I'm gonna take that piece of knowledge, that awareness, that revelation I got, and then I'm gonna apply it to my life in a fresh, new way with the help of the Lord. Thank you. And what a blessing. Number one, the key part. The first one that stands in our way to really grow in the things of God, in his understanding, in our relationship. That's the most important part with God, is our unwillingness to sacrifice our time. That is so key. You might say Inga, like da, I'm a busy physician. I'm always strapped for time and we always feel pressured for time, right? If you are a mom like me, you're running out you know, in the morning trying to get the kids ready, then you have to get yourself ready. You might be rushing back. From work to pick up your kids from school or from preschool or whatever. You might be rushing in clinic from patient to patient. Nothing ever runs on time. We are always pressed for time and guess what? That has always been this way. This will always be this way because we are just busy people and the world tends to just run this way. Nobody is usually sitting there, especially in our profession, sipping Pima collateral on the beach. Well, maybe there's few people, but in general we are also high achievers, high accomplished people. We tend to run a faster pace than many others in life. So yes, we are always busy. But oftentimes you have to ask yourself busy with what, there are good things to be busy with, but sometimes we make all other things priority and they take priority in our life and therefore take over our schedule. I always tell my coaching clients, I coach academic physicians and have done that for years and I often say. I can tell what your priorities are by looking at your schedule, what you do each day, or what you give time to. And that usually is a telltale sign, what is actually important. And there is a lot of things we do every day that maybe are not that critical. Yes, you need to take care of your family. Yes, you need to take care of your patients. Yes, you should do your work with excellence up onto the Lord. But there are many things you and I know that we are doing, that we, we could we could save some time, right? But it is often that unwillingness to sacrifice time. That unwillingness to be a little bit inconvenienced to maybe say, okay, it is not convenient right now to study the Bible. It is not convenient for me to go on to church on Sunday because I'm tired and I need to take a nap. It is not convenient to host or attend a small group because I've been working all week. It is not convenient to show up to the prayer meeting, but. It is an essential requirement. You spend the time with God in whatever fashion to act and get into community with other believers to actually grow in the things and the knowledge of God. So we are often not willing to give up those things and there's plenty of things we all do. May I just point to this lovely device called a phone, and I bet you if you would look at your social media and your Twitter account and how long you are scrolling on there and. Posting or commenting on stupid stuff or just scrolling. I've, I, I do that too. I'm like, catch myself. I actually, the other day it was like, gone are the apps because I'm, I'm catching myself, wasting time that I could spend and prayer or resting all with my family or doing something productive. So it is our unwillingness to sacrifice time and be inconvenienced in this way. That is very bold statement. I know can hear me in the right context. I'm not saying abandoning your patients or your families, but I am saying reevaluate carefully where you actually spend your time and let's be honest where we spend it. And isn't there honestly some things on your schedule or in happening every day that are purely a waste of time. So, and then. That is where we need to make some sacrifices to actually invest that into our spiritual growth. So that is really, really important. I'm gonna pick up my notes to make sure I'm not missing anything else. Oh yeah, that one other key thought the Bible talks about our life is we are pouring it out like an offering to the Lord. I would challenge myself and you Are we pouring our lives out as a sacrificial offering our entire lives? That means there is a sacrifice and an offering. There is usually an inconvenience. That might mean you're gonna give up some time. Maybe that might mean you gotta give up some social activities or shipping your kids around to all different social and sports activities because everybody else is doing it. But then you don't have time to actually get quiet before the Lord. And I see way too many parents being too busy with all sorts of kids activities and all sorts of things that they, don't have a time to sit as a family. To have dinner together, to fellowship together, to read the words, to even have a conversation together. And we just got busy and distracted with multiple agendas and schedules versus focusing on what is really important. And I think our society has been so entrenched in that, that that becomes the norm. But really it is hurting us to the core. So let your life. Be an outpouring, an offering to God in your time, in all sacrifices. Yeah, it's your money, it's your talent, but it's also your time. And let, let's sink in and really pray over that and let the Lord show you where you are taking time and things. That he wants you to sacrifice and put back into him. Now, the second one where we are often unwilling and that stands in our way, is our unwillingness to be uncomfortable. We like to hold on to those way familiar things of God that we grew up with. Maybe I didn't grow up in a Christian household per se. I became a Christian during high school and what you learn in the early days when you become a believer, right? That's bit entrenched in you. There has to be a lot of. Learning and layered learning and unlearning and revelation to understand that not everything that I believed, and this still happens to this day, is perhaps scripturally accurate. Perhaps I have picked up some teaching from others. That was a misapplied scripture and perhaps I have not been willing to sacrifice my time to go back to the scripture and actually read. A lot of times I find people this goes back to time and a little bit to this point, to do kind of secondhand learning. It's great to learn from other people. Don't get me wrong. Right. If you never read the scriptures for yourself and you always read them secondhand from other people, if the only person who is feeding you is their pastor and the sermon, something is wrong, and he would probably tell you that if he is a good pastor, right? He would tell you where, where's the reading of you word. So often we get uncomfortable in the things as we are getting stretched in any growth. And again, I'm telling my coaching clients all the time, right? If you want to grow in your personal development in academia, in, in your career, in your skills, you are gonna be uncomfortable at times. Right? There is this quote that I picked up a long time ago as a coach, that I learned from my mentors. Right. Nothing ever happens in the comfort zone. There is nothing that you learn new. There's nothing new that you gain from staying in that comfort zone. You will always be comfortable, but never make a leap of faith or move forward in life, and that is how many Christians live their life. Let me just stay to what is comfortable, what seems like a good fit, but never be challenged in their faith. Or in what they really, truly believe. And in fact, often what happens is that, especially I, I hear our pastor explains this really well, but with children and teenagers, we have so adapted just what they learned that they never thought about themself. And once you grow up and you go to college and have, enter real life and people challenge you, or life challenges you, it all falls apart because it doesn't have any substance. But substance in growing in faith comes from our unwillingness to be uncomfortable and be confronted by God and say, he is what I need you to do. So we think we understand God when in, in fact we don't. I heard this wonderful quote at our conference and I'm not sure if that person came up with it, but I found it very profound, so I wanna share it. And he said in his talk. As minister, we are way too comfortable with a God we never knew. And I thought that was a very profound quote that really kind of rattled my cage and was like, whoa. I think I know God. I think I know how he acts. Yes, the Bible tells us all about his character and how in, in his ways, but there's still so much we don't understand, especially when we kind of living in the real world with feets on the ground and, and we struggling with. Day into our, in the hospital. We think we have understanding when we don't. So, but the Lord wants us to be stretched in our faith, right? When you look at Jesus' ministry, what he did while he was ministering on the earth and living his example to us, guess what? He stretched and challenged people, made them uncomfortable, left and right. His disciples, the Pharisees, the people yet. People were attracted. They were like, what's going on here? And I wanna encourage you to not be too comfortable. Do not think you have figured it all out, and you think you know what you're talking about. There is always room to grow. There is always room for you and me to grow more about God, to understand more. Every time I read the Bible, the more I read, the more I learn and the more my faith is stretched. Because sometimes we make assumptions about certain things that are actually not true, or perhaps we had a misunderstanding about scripture and only when we spent time with God in our open that we will actually have a revelation that oopsie. I didn't really get that quite right. And the last thing that comes to mind is we often want, we want to see a move of God, right? We were hungry. We hear these testimonies from other people and we are hungry to, to have a testimony like that where God did a wonderful way thing in our life. I don't know, maybe a healing or maybe even a miracle or maybe just a, a daily kind of activity where something happens in your life. And he's asking you to do something that makes you uncomfortable. I give you a very basic example, and actually this happened to me just a few days ago, last weekend. I love praying for people. I wasn't always like this. But now I, I love praying for people. I do that at church. I do that, you know, through my ministry and so, but I don't pray very often in public. Yes, I pray for patience and you hear testimonies on that, on this very show. In the earlier episodes. I even train and teach you a little bit how to think about. Practicing prayer and where you can apply it. So, but even I need to be still stretched. And I remember I was going to Whole Foods last weekend and I guess I was on a spiritual high, so to speak. Like I was listening to a lot of sermons when I am not when I'm doing, you know, driving around or doing something in the household, like cleaning or, or doing the laundry. I always listen to something spiritual or sometimes I'm quiet. And I pray out loud. In this instance, I went to Whole Foods. I was kind of already on like, ah, you know, the Lord is so good and there stops a lady. I actually was ready to go into the store, forgot my wallet, so I got back into my car, grabbed my wallet, and boop, I pop out of my car. There Stens, a lady with her car who needed help, and in the past, in fact, a week earlier, a similar situation happened and I just passed by. You know, it's one of those things where you're like, oh, maybe they're, they're just asking for money. And sometimes you have to use your discernment for sure. I'm not saying, you know, help everybody that it comes along where you feel like something's off here. But I was prompted in an instant in my spirit to stop and pray for this lady. And, and help her. Now, I actually didn't have much cash in my, I had like a few coins and, and she was telling me the story and who knows whether the lord knows whether it's true. It doesn't actually matter, but. I felt prompted to number one, stop and actually engage with her, which is uncomfortable, right? We rather just walk straight, pa buy, you know, head and, and, and face forward and, and go and get my tasks done and go shopping at Whole Foods. But I felt prompted to stop. So I did, which, you know, is uncomfortable, was actually were standing in the middle of the parking lot and kind of causing a blockage there. And she tells me a story. I give her the little I have. And then I was like, I really need to pray for her. And I was like, lady, what's your name? Can I pray for you? Can I lay hands on you and pray for you? And I prayed right there in the parking lot. Now I'm telling you this not to say, wow, I'm so awesome. No, usually I don't do this. This was a baby step example, how God can show up in an instant in your daily life while you're doing and going about your daily business. And he prompts you to do something that is uncomfortable. And I have no idea what happened with that lady. That's, that's between God and her. But I was obedient in the moment and being uncomfortable, and that's the point I wanna make. It might be these little things you might be prompted in clinic to pray for somebody. Maybe God is showing you things in a new way. Maybe you are opened up to think about scripture in a new, fresh way. Maybe they are new. People coming to your life that teaching you in a fresh, new way. And you might be a little bit uncomfortable, you might be uncomfortable with some people, the way they look, the way they speak, the way they dress, because it's a bit different than your church religious style. But I want to caution you to not always go and dismiss it, but actually say, Lord. What am I supposed to do here? Because there might be people coming into your life that entering your life that make you utterly uncomfortable, but God sent them to do just that, to challenge you in a new way. Now, obviously, hear me on this. You, you pray over it, right? But you hear if you feel the Holy Spirit is telling you, you know, listen, pause, do this. Don't dismiss it because you are getting a bit too uncomfortable. Because you don't like how the person talks or dresses, and I'm not talking about inappropriate stuff, but you know, we, we are all very attached to our religious styles. May I just say that And I think it's time to let go of that and say, let's, we are not doing religion here. We are not doing a religious club here. We are trying to understand and gain knowledge of God and get into a deeper relationship. And guess what? That will be utterly uncomfortable. Read every story in the New Testament. In the Old Testament, particularly a lot of what God asked to do, his people, or what he asked from some of the prophets or what they did and ask of the people were other little bizarre and uncomfortable. Now, imagine if everybody just would have said, and, well, that's a little weird. I'm not gonna do that. Right. What would happen, and I would challenge each and every one of us. Let's not be so quick to judge how God will show up in your life. Let's not be so quick to judge what is right or wrong, as long as it is biblical. Now you always go back to the word and say, does it match scripture? And what does the Holy Spirit tell me? But be careful that, you know, is it the Holy Spirit? And I always have to learn that too. Like is it the Holy Spirit or is it just my flesh? Is it the Holy Spirit, or is it actually the enemy giving me some bad thoughts here and trying to cause division in dis disperse angle or whatever, or judgment, or is it actually God pointing something out to me? So I encourage you. Sacrifice your time. Look where you can let God point out, where you need to give up something, where you can fill some of your time with his glory, with time with him. And number two, be willing to be uncomfortable. If you wanna grow in any way, get to know the Lord more. You need those two things. Sacrifice your time and be absolutely willing to be absolutely, utterly uncomfortable. And I promise while I shouldn't promise anything. I really believe that God will honor that as long as we do it again in an honorable way. Reading the word in prayer, listening to the Holy Spirit, we can never go wrong with that. So with that, I hope you were blessed Again. Make sure you'll follow us on YouTube, et cetera. Subscribe to the show also, if you will say wow, I really love this kind of instruction and teaching and I want to learn more. Then get on the wait list for the Heal the Healers Mentorship Program, which is a Christian physician mentorship program to fully equip and train you in having spiritual growth discipleship. Learn about spiritual discipline, these things we are talking about right here on a much deeper level where you have accountability and people around you that encourage you as well as learning about how does it look like to lead as Jesus does in your own life as well as a physician. And what does the Bible say about healing so that we can really. Integrate all that. We are as Christian physicians, as son and daughters of the most, tie into our daily lives wherever God has planted us. So scan the QR code. You can get on the wait list when I open the program again, probably in the spring. I would love to welcome you. This way we can stay in touch and also. I will send you weekly encouragement, number one about this podcast and YouTube channel for new episodes. But I'll also send out a weekly dose of encouragement, things that I'm usually chewing on in my faith, things that God reveals to me or that I'm learning. I share them. Sometimes they will be encouraging something that will be strengthening you, sometimes that will be challenging you as I go through the same motions. I will pass them on to you. So I hope this blessed you. Have a wonderful day and talk to you soon. My prayer is that you were encouraged, strengthened, and perhaps even convicted with this episode today. If this podcast has blessed you, would you help share it with your friends and colleagues and even share it on social media? Also, leave us a review on the podcast platform where you are listening to this content. It would help us a lot. Together we can share the good news of Jesus and transform medicine. One physician and one patient at the time. Have a great day. God bless.