29. How Journaling Helps Physicians to Hear from God in a Noisy World

Feeling overwhelmed by the noise of life and struggling to hear God's voice? You're not alone.

 In this episode of the Heal the Healers podcast, host Dr. Inga Hofmann—Christian physician, coach, and mentor—shares how to create space for God’s voice through intentional quiet time and journaling.

✅ Whether you're navigating the demands of medicine or trying to deepen your spiritual walk, this episode will equip you with practical tips to hear God clearly, develop a habit of journaling, and integrate faith into your daily life.

🎯 What you’ll learn:

• Why physicians struggle to hear God’s voice—and how to overcome it
• The power of journaling in your quiet time
• Real stories of hearing God in the middle of medicine
• How to create space for spiritual clarity in a noisy world

✨ Learn more about the Heal the Healers Mentorship Program, a Spirit-led community for Christian physicians seeking wholeness, power, and purpose in their calling.

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 📘 Mentorship Info + Enrollement → https://www.ingahofmann.com/heal-the-healers-mentorship-program

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Transcript

Restream recording Apr 23, 2025 • 08:07:47 PM: 0:01

Do you feel like you really want to hear from God more clearly, but are struggling in a noisy and distracted world? Well then this episode is for you, and if you are like a busy physician, like most of my listeners then you understand that the busyness of life and the destruction can. Often get in the way to learn how to hear from God more clearly. So if that is you, stay tuned, my friend, because this episode is exactly created for you. You will really love this and I'm gonna share some simple tips, how you can get started practicing hearing from God more clearly. 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 in 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, hello there my friend. How are you doing? I hope you're having a wonderful day, wonderful week, wherever you are in this world, and today I am excited to share some very practical tips on how you can hear from God more clearly. And give you some practical nuggets and it's very simple. It all starts with a pen and paper. Good old fashioned. So in this episode we're gonna talk about how journaling helps you hear from God in a noisy world. How can you hear from God? More, better, more clearly. We all want that, right? We wanna hear what God has to say, but let's face it, a lot of times it is really hard to calm our distracted minds, to stay focused and maybe even have the patience to sit and wait and say. What is God actually saying to me? Can I hear what he's saying at all in this constant bus of distraction in the modern day world? And you are no exception if you are struggling with this. Certainly I think this is hard for all of us and like with everything in life this is the thing that takes. Discipline and effort and and time to really say I'm gonna be dedicated and I get focused because I want to build deeper intimacy with the Lord. I want to stay there and listen to what he has to say that I am struggling. Because there's constantly something going on in my mind. And here's the thing, if you are a physician, I know we move at a hundred miles per hour you probably have a long to-do list that is always on the forefront of your mind. And it can be really hard to turn all that off and say, I'm gonna quiet my brain and. Fill it with the word and with the love and with the awareness of Jesus. And that is something we just have to practically learn how to do. So we are gonna get started with some practical tips, but before we dive in there, do me a favor. If you're listening to the show, on a podcast, on YouTube or see it anywhere else. Please subscribe and share this show. This is of tremendous help to me. It really blesses me. It blesses others. If you share anything good you found here, because if you have a friend and you're like, I think they need that too, well, don't keep it a secret. Share it with them and bless them. That's why I create this content so that other people can be blessed and encouraged in their. Daily walk as question physicians. So I thank you for doing that. It's a real true blessing to me. Also if you haven't done so follow this show on YouTube at Heal the Healers or on your favorite podcast platform. Make sure you subscribe so the show comes to you. And then you can also follow me on my various social media platforms. I'm mostly on Facebook. Eventually we'll reach out to other things and YouTube of course. So subscribe there, follow the content there. I'm not just creating videos and podcasts. I'm also creating content that you can read and, wanna just encourage you in your walk of faith. So with that said, thank you so much for doing that and God bless you for doing that. I really appreciate it. So let's dive in into this idea how journaling helps us to hear from God more clearly in a noisy world. And I wanna just start with a personal story that. I didn't always feel like I hear from God. I often felt like way too impatient, way too distracted to sit and listen to what he has to say, and honestly wasn't even confident that. Was he talking or was it just my mind speaking and my own thoughts? And I get this question all the time now inside the, here the Healers Mentorship program where we talk about that or when I run a little workshops or I just have conversations with other questions that people say, well. Cannot be really sure that was him or was it just my voice in my head. And so I wanna give you some practical tips that have really helped me. To understand how to hear from God better. There is many different practices that you could be doing. So I'm not gonna talk about all the various things. There are probably 10 things I could be talking about, how to hear from God better. I wanna just focus for today on this one thing, which is journaling because it's very tangible and I wanna keep it laser focused. So journaling is a process by which we can. Capture our thoughts. We can transcribe what is going on in our mind, in our emotions. Sometimes people use journaling just to kind of capture what's, what is going on that day. That is probably more like a diary kind of thing. But journaling is really a powerful process that helps us to process things and to create more self-awareness and in. Throughout the years, I have journaled on and off. For various reasons now. It's been a consistent practice in my personal development and growth journey and in my faith journey for probably, I don't know, easily 10 years, probably more and longer. And I have found it very powerful. In fact, I talked to my coaching clients. I coach academic physicians and physicians. All the time. And I talk to them quite frequently to encourage them to journal because that's how we process our thoughts and our ideas and our emotions. That's how we can slow down and observe what's going on in our mind and our emotions and even get a sense of, huh, I was thinking this. And my bad thinking or my negative thoughts, or maybe my negative emotion came at the back end of this. So give you a practical example. I I often observed, especially in my younger academic years, but this still sometimes happens that, when I was in a stressful phase where I needed to get something done, let's say I needed to write a paper or a grant or I just had some project that needed to get done and I required time to really sit down and focus on distracted to do this mental type of work versus just busy work it came. Very frequently to pass that my kids somehow would know in those moments even they had no idea what's going on, that I would fall in the trap of getting triggered and fall in a trap of getting sort of my buttons pushed. I. Sometimes by complete nonsense with my children. And basically then I got this emotional fog where I was like, oh no, I'm frustrated and now I'm not in a mood and I feel shut down and I cannot write again on this paper or something. This happened to me all the time, but I didn't quite realize that that was actually happening. And then. Also be able to begin to work on that until I started journaling and I made these observations and wrote them down. Because the truth is in life, everything is very fleeting. And if we don't pass and reflect and write it down we might not remember. And it is like a science experiment, right? Experi. You write down and observe what's happening. You, you run an experiment, you observe what's happening. You record the results and then you make an interpretation based on that. Life is very similar, and that's kind of what we are doing with journaling. You writing down the events, your emotions, your thoughts. The results that you're getting and you're processing and you're asking yourself questions and you're reflecting, and most of us don't ever take the time to do that. So journaling by itself is a very powerful tool, and many of you might be already journaling, but I really wanna focus this conversation on, well, how does journaling helped me to hear from God? And it's probably good to give you another practical example. One of the examples was that I started to begin to journal not just in my quiet time, which I will get to in a moment, but also, in church services and in worship services. I literally don't ever go to anything without a journal. And the reason why is that I have now gathered from my experience that I. God sometimes speaks in unexpected places, and I want to be able to capture what he's saying in those moments. So I went to a worship service. This is now probably at least a couple years ago, probably almost three years ago that I went to a worship service at another church. And it was suddenly that in that worship service I was minding kind of my own business, worshiping the Lord, singing the songs that suddenly I felt kind of arrested in my spirit and the Lord was giving me specific instruction. To host the Heal the Healers Retreat, which I then ultimately hosted almost two years later in November of 2024. And that's now past history and it was amazing. So at that moment though, I was like, wow, I. I really felt the Lord say, host this TU tweet. This is going to be the name. Heal The healers came from that very worship service. That's why this podcast is called This Way. And everything I do in physician ministry is rest. On Heal the Healers because that is the name I've gotten in that worship service. And then he also went on to give me in specific instructions. Some of them were more directive. Others, I just saw pictures. I literally saw images, how it will look like and what it will feel like. And based on that, I immediately rushed to write it down. And sometimes I cannot even write fast enough when such a download from Heaven comes. Then I had it in writing. I can promise you, because I know this from experience, that if I would have not written a down number one, I would have forgotten a lot of the things that even though they were very ral and very intense in the moment, it was a really God move. I felt moved by the Holy Spirit. I was crying. I was weeping. I was sitting on the floor. Yet it was. So intense. Yet I know from other experiences that when I didn't write things down in detail that I would tend to forget some of those because I think you're so caught up in the moment you think it will remember and you don't. This actually happens with dreams too. But I don't wanna digress. So I wrote everything down when it later came to starting to execute. This vision that I got in this worship service where I felt like the Lord really spoke to me. Number one, I had something in writing to go by that was clear versus trying to remember what he said and maybe getting it. Wrong. And even if I would just divert from it a little bit, it wouldn't be exactly the vision he had in mind. So that must number one, I kind of had a to-do list basically. But also the other important part was that later when it got difficult and challenging to think about, wow, can I really do this? Did God really say, or did I just make this up? I had a journal entry to go back to and with a specific description and an encounter of the environment I was in, what I felt to testify to myself that that was a real thing and not just made up in my head. And that was very powerful. And I can tell you going back, to it over time when I was in the process of making this retreat come to life was very powerful because quite frankly, it wasn't always easy and I needed to lean on the Lord and I needed to remind myself, no, he actually said that, and I'm not just trying to make something happen. So that is one example. So I want you to take note of that. Be mindful. You might go to a church service and journal and write down notes on the sermon. Sermon notes. Great. Do that. Pay attention to what you are actually getting besides what the pastor is saying, these are probably the, the important words to write down and not the ones he's saying. Yeah, there's gonna be some punchlines for our pastor. He says a lot of things in a hundred miles per hour. There will be thoughts that come to your mind and questions that might be triggered in your spirit that you want to pay attention to, but then journaling is also a very powerful tool in your quiet time, and that's really what I wanna focus on. I wanna encourage you to have journaling as part of your quiet time practice. So in the last episode we talked about how to reset your quiet time how to read the word, how to pray, and how to hear from God more clearly. And I really wanna build upon that. So if you have not listened to episode 28, please go back afterwards and listen to that. And if you want more. Detail on how to really work out your quiet time. I did a three four hour training. Over a weekend on this, which you can find in my Facebook community, which is called the Heal the Healers community. I welcome you there and you're free to listen to it there. So but how do you incorporate, I. Journaling into your quiet time. So let me tell you at practically what I do and then give you maybe a couple testimonies or examples. So first I usually sit down and I create a quiet space and I read my word and then I pray. And then most of the time I go to journaling, then, which means I reflect on what's coming to my mind. Sometimes this could be just. Unrelated to the scripture I read, sometimes I'm not quite sure what to journal and I start with gratitude to really just think, thank you, Lord, another start of a week. That's often how I start my Monday Journal entry or thank you Lord for the weekend or thank you God for the springtime. This might not be very deep, but what that does it is getting the pen to paper and me in a flow and a process of writing. And from there, once the pen hit the paper, there is something really extraordinary that happens, perhaps because I've done it for a while. But. Words just come and start to flow and sometimes more words than others. Sometimes I feel my journal start is very dull and I'm literally just saying, God, I'm struggling. Please help me. Which is a clue. Sometimes it can be a reflection of our heart Then. Illustrated in outlined in, in a sentence as well as a prayer, God, please help me. So journaling can be part of prayer as well. That's why I said in the beginning. Usually I do bible reading, prayer and then journal entry, but there are times when I flip it around where I might be feeling stuck with prayer and where I will journal first and it gets me started. So what to journal on. I might be journaling a reflection on the scripture. I don't usually do a systematic approach. Like some people do a soap bible study, they read the scripture, they kind of observe, then they do an application and a prayer. I am. These are great if, if you need a framework. I usually don't ever do that. Perhaps because I've done it for so long that I feel not the need to have training wheels anymore. And also at this stage in my, in my work with the Lord, I want to be very. Aware. I don't wanna press anything into a structure, but I wanna be very aware and flexible to how he shows up and when he shows up. So. So our journal entry might be reflection on scripture, but not very structured. At least for me. It often is a reflection of my state of mind or emotion, and I would encourage you just write down what comes to mind. How are you doing? How are you doing emotionally and spiritual in your wellbeing? Write it out and be honest with yourself. And as you write it out, you also be honest with the Lord. Because I feel like writing something out is as powerful, sometimes more powerful perhaps than speaking it out. And so it can be very freeing and powerful because you are making perhaps, you, you're confessing something. Perhaps you're being open and aware by writing out what's going on in your internal world and you're putting it to paper. Sometimes it can be also a real declaration, and often as I do this. It flows into a contemplative, in a, in a way of prayer where I'm really starting to almost say, Lord, help me with this. And through this back and forth, he is where I am Lord. I'm struggling with this. Lord help me. Sometimes he starts to pick up the conversation with me and I'm literally then transcribing what I'm hearing. So it could be. This happened to me just yesterday. I was actually feeling not all the feels, not all that spiritual. It was just really being diligent with obedience. Just going through the process and you may say through the motions, and I was doing exactly what I just described, sharing for my heart, writing how I felt, and suddenly everything shifted. It's literally like something else moved in me and I suddenly wrote out a prophetic word over medicine, the heart. Suddenly the heart of the Lord spoke to me what the state of medicine is, and it is very fresh. So I like to sit on it, but I probably will share it here in maybe the next couple weeks if timing feels right. So. Suddenly out of a dull moment came a. Prophetic Warning, all Lord Prayer, intercession over us, over you, over the medical community. A call from the Lord that now I, I need to go back to and process and intercede, and think about, and, and, and, and pray with the Lord. So that is one version. You're like, whoa, that's pretty intense. And I wanna assure you this is not what happens every day. Sometimes it could be something basic. I think I shared this probably a month or two ago. I was in the process of deciding whether I need to go. Well, I knew I needed to go to Boston. I didn't know when I, it was a whole thing. The Lord prepared me for literally my month between May and when I finally went, it was February. But this was a powerful example, how journal entries helped me to see in hindsight how the Lord had spoken. Because I had all those entries that I literally, totally forgot about. So, and I didn't actually have that awareness, how often he had spoken and what the timeline and the intensity and the increasing frequency leading up to that intercession prayer assignment that I went on in February, where until I looked at my journal, literally when I was already in Boston preparing for a being a speaker. At a retreat that I last minute was kind of pulled into, so it was very powerful. I was able to flip back the journal and see, wow. The first time I felt that notch was in May, and actually now pulled up an older journal that I didn't have with me. There was probably even a, a, a nudge a sensation about that earlier, but. Clearly the Lord had spoken and then I saw through my daily journal entries, the dates when he picked up the conversation because I recorded it. And there are entries in there that we literally make you chuckle, but it is a good illustration to hear how he is speaking and how I'm recording. So I remember it was probably around the holiday season right before Christmas, and I sensed I need to go. It had now increased an urgency, and I felt like it came, it kept on coming back in my quiet time. So I asked the Lord one day in my prayer, Lord, when do I need to go? When? Because I'm like, okay, let me get my ducks in the room. Let me, I fly, et cetera. And he said, I will tell you, I literally wrote that down as silly and as simple as that sound I wrote down, I asked the Lord, when do I go? He said, I will tell you. And I literally put that in, put that in quotation marks. I literally laid out the script of the conversation as it flowed and. I kid you not. Then a couple days later, you know, I then I immediately, I even recorded this, went into, okay, I need to, I need to explore flights. When are they the cheapest? I even wrote that down for some reason, probably sooner the word can show me later my stinking thinking and my shortcoming. But it was really interesting. And then days later or maybe a week later, I got more clear direction. So. It was really fascinating and here's the big point. Without my journal entry, I would not know that he had spoken. So so I hope these testimonies help you, but I wanna give you just some practical bullet points, why journaling is critically important, and how it helped you to hear in the noisy word. Number one, every time you journal you have to slow down. Because when you write it slows down your thinking, which sometimes. Quick disclaimer can be difficult if you really get a quick download. I feel like my, my pen doesn't move fast enough. But that's just something I have to deal with with my crappy handwriting as the, the speed picks up. But, so you have to slow down. So that is one good thing you have to kind of lean and, and listen to the Lord. And through that, then really learn how to listen. And write down what you think he said. And through that process, I discovered. The difference between me journaling and processing my thoughts, which sounded different than the lure talking to me and giving me perhaps direction or GI pointing out something about me or about him, maybe how I was processing things when I was feeling down and wonder if I doing anything wrong to hear. Oh. If I mul on my, I must be doing something wrong. It sounds this way. And then the Lord said, you don't do. You are doing fine. His voice had a different donation. He used different words. I. Because of literal transcription, I could see this is Inga and INGO's mind in her flesh, and this is God speaking. It's like when you are reading a book and a novel you don't always have to have in the novel. He said, Mr. So-and-So said behind every conversation on dialogue, you can pick it up by reading the storyline and by knowing the characters. It's exactly like this journaling on God. So you slow down. You have to learn how to listen and tune in. It helps you process the conversation, right, and your own thoughts. Like I mentioned in the beginning, journal is a great way to process your thoughts and emotion, and you start to create a track record. And I gave you examples of the retreat as well as the, the, the. Trip to Boston and because now I had a track record of evidence of recorded conversation that I didn't just make that in, up in my head there is a track record here. I, I recorded the dialogue. It's like, okay, I have a tape recording, I have a transcript. This is Rio. This was so important so many times down the road because here's what we all do. We get into doubt, we get into fear, we get uncertain, and then we retreat. But if you have a record to go back to, it can be a huge encouragement pointing you back towards the red direction the Lord wants you to go. So and then the last part is. If the Lord starts speaking to you and I would say he's speaking all the time. We are just not attuned to it. But once you pick up on it. I do feel we as believers have a personal responsibility to steward well what he is saying and one way we can steward well, what he is saying is starting by writing it down to catch it. Because I said if I don't write it down, I will forget. So these are the important points. So start journaling as part of your quiet time. Record your emotions, your thoughts, what's going on, maybe the results you're getting, where you're headed in life. Be open to record questions to the Lord as well as prayers. And please, and then listen to if you hear anything back. Don't take any judgment. This is sort of a last tip of, what am I writing down? Just write without filtering it. That's really important when your journal don't filter. You can analyze it later, but don't filter based on, oh, that was a crazy thought. I could have said, I'm never gonna write that healer, he this retreat down, because that was nuts. That would have been a pure steward out of intuition. I wrote it down and I'm so glad I did. Praise the Lord. So so sit down, journal, record the conversation. In the process, you will be forced to slow down, which is, by the way, fantastic for your mental health. You will learn how to slow down and listen to the Lord, which we all need to do in a busy, distracted world. We must learn how to slow down especially as physicians that go at a hundred miles an hour. You are now processing what. Is happening in your life, what you're reading and the word, what you're hearing from the Lord. So then you create a track record that you can go back to basically creating tools and evidence. And lastly, this will allow you to actually steward the word and the information that he has given you, whether it's, it's just little things where he wants to encourage you or maybe specific directions. So I hope this helped you. I really encourage you, get a journal for yourself and have that right next to you as you have your quiet time. Also, last tip, be flexible to pick up the journal before you completed all the other steps of your quiet time. Sometimes there will be things like, oh my goodness. Something's happening. I need to write it down right now, then do that first. But typically it's bible prayer journaling for me. And you'll figure out your own way, what works for you. But I find this a very helpful framework and a starting point. So I encourage you in that. Lastly, if you are like Inga. This is all amazing. I really wish I had you by my side in my ear every week. Could you just come by my side? The answer is yes, I am actually, oops, this is the wrong thing. So I wanna let you know that this week I. No matter, depending on when you're listening to this, the doors to the Heal the Healers Mentorship Program are open. This is a specific mentorship program for Christian physicians to equip you, to disciple you. You will be mentored by me. I'm also a professional to range coach. I've mentioned, I've coached physicians for many years. I trained with John Maxwell, so I I'm a leadership coach. I'm a professional physician coach. So I can help you in many, many areas. But also I love the Lord. I love listening to his voice. I love reading and studying his word. And what we are doing inside the mentorship program is equipping you I'm equipping you to to integrate faith in medicine. Live your faith out boldly so you're not schizophrenic anymore. Living in two different worlds to be really equipped and strong in faith because that's faith that. Face it. Our church pe friends don't always get it because we have crazy schedules and they don't understand why we are not there every Sunday. And then we have people in the medical field that sometimes might not get our faith either and maybe are even hostile to it. And it can be very. Challenging to live in this T of war and that's not what the Lord called us to do. The Lord called us to be his hands and feet and spread the gospel to heal the sick and are free, the broken, harvested, and the captives. So that's what we are here to do, in fact. The new series, we are about to start. As you're joining this program, we are starting healing Beyond Medicine. I will teach you all about the Ministry of Healing different types of healing that are in the Bible that you need to know about as a physician, especially as a believer so that you can fully. Heal and restore and serve your patients. And this is critical in this hour. So there is monthly teaching there weekly teaching. There's a monthly coaching call as well, and there's lots of support and love for me and prayer. So scan this. QR code doors are open until Sunday the 27th. Of April. There is a VIP section that you will find out on the website if you are interested in also hiring a coach and you want a Christian coach to walk alongside you besides the equipping in the biblical teaching and all that we do in the mentorship. And you're like, I actually need a career coach, or I, I, I'm, I'm finding new jobs or I'm just struggling with a work life. Balance, whatever it might be on your other. Considered hiring a coach. There is a new thing I'm doing. It's basically a VP track where you get one-on-one coaching with me plus the entire mentorship. And that for less than if you would just hire me as a coach, you basically get mentorship for free and you get me at a much lower rate than hiring me as a coach separately. So it's kind of a no brainer. If you ever, ever consider this and. If you have an important value to not only have an excellent coach that is trained in leadership and personal development and mindset and all sorts of aspects, but who is actually a believer? Because let me tell you, there is a ton of new age in the coaching practices out there. How do I know? That's another story for another time, but so please don't be deceived. So God bless you. Have a wonderful day and I will see you hopefully in a week or so. With that let's tune out for the music and have a wonderful week and I will put all the links and the information. In the show notes below this video or in the show notes of the podcast the signup page to register for Heal the Healers as well as the episodes I mentioned in the Facebook group. Have a wonderful day. 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.