33. Stop Multitasking God: How Every Christian Doctor Can Heal Their Quiet Time

Hey doc… can we have a heart-to-heart?

Ever folded laundry during prayer or caught up on the Bible while charting? You’re not alone, and no shame here. Today’s episode is your wake-up call from Heaven.

Inside this episode, I’m getting real about a truth we all need to confront: You can’t multitask God. We’re diving into three powerful reasons why your quiet time deserves undivided attention and what you're missing out on when it becomes background noise.

Here’s what you’ll walk away with:

• Why God isn’t interested in sharing His time with your to-do list
• How multitasking muffles the Holy Spirit’s voice (yes, even with Bible apps open)
• Why you and Jesus are both worth slowing down for
• A simple 15-minute challenge to revive your devotional life starting this week

💡 Whether you’re walking hospital halls or leading a busy practice, this episode will challenge and equip you to trade “proximity” to God’s Word for intimacy with His presence.

Next Step: Ready to Go Deeper?

If this episode stirred something in you and you’re craving accountability, depth, and Spirit-led guidance as a physician and believer, come join us inside the Heal the Healers Mentorship Program.

This high-touch, Christ-centered mentorship offers:

• Monthly spiritual + professional coaching
• Weekly teaching on the Word, spiritual mentoring, and ministry time
• A like-minded physician community hungry for God's presence

🎯 Learn more + apply at:

https://www.ingahofmann.com/heal-the-healers-mentorship-program

My prayer is that this episode is an encouragement to you.

🎧 Press play and let’s heal the healers, starting with you.

Are you a Christian physician longing for a deeper walk with God and a supportive community that truly gets it?

The Heal the Healers Mentorship is a Spirit-led program equipping Christian physicians to walk in wholeness, power, and purpose. You’ll grow in intimacy with God, walk boldly in your identity, and learn to integrate faith and medicine—without burnout or compromise.

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Transcript

0:00

Hey there a little confession time here. Have you ever listened to the Bible while unloading the dishwasher or fold the laundry during prayer and caught it? Quiet time. I've been there, but the hard truth is you can't multitask God. So in this episode, we're gonna talk about. Not multitasking God and actually giving him our full attention because the Bible says we still know that I'm God in Psalm 46, 10. Well, welcome back to another episode of Heal the Healers. I'm so excited to be with you today, and I wanna chat a little bit about this entire idea of you can't multitask God. And why your quiet time deserves your full attention, or I should probably say why the Lord deserves your full attention. And this is something that really came to me. I don't even know when it started, but there were times when I was listening to, not necessarily my quiet time, but maybe to sermons. Where I just got this revelation from the Lord probably was taking a walk and listen to maybe a sermon in the old days what I used to do when the old days meaning, oh, that probably was 10 years ago. I remember I used to walk from the parking lot to the hospital and. On the way over while walking, I would read a devotional in the Bible app. Now that's awesome. I was reading bible verses. I was underlying them and I was reading the word of God. And you say, that's awesome. Nothing wrong with that. And that was great, except sometimes. But was the only devotional time I was getting that day, and that is not enough. And what I heard in my spirit, not at the time, if just about a couple years back, and it kept on popping in my head. So I wanted to share it here, is that you cannot multitask God and. I think that is something to really ponder on. So let me unpack that for you today and hope give you some practical strategies and some encouragement to just step away and say, I'm not gonna multitask the Lord anymore. I'm gonna dwell in his presence. Because here's the thing, there is a real difference between. Proximity to the Board of God, meaning I, I pick it up somewhere on a, on a bumper sticker, on a Bible reading app that I am reading while I'm walking to work or intimacy with God in his presence and. While reading the word of God on the go has its place, there's nothing wrong with that. It does not replace your intimacy with the Lord's presence. And just because the Bible is somehow playing in the background, let's say you're listening to the Bible and that's all you do, and you do it while you're doing a few other things that doesn't actually mean. That your heart is engaged fully, because let's face it, most of us, when we are multitasking, we are not a hundred percent engaged in what is happening with all the pieces. So we are listening to the Bible in the background. Chances are we are not really fully engaged and present with the Lord like we would if that would be all we are doing. And I wanna remind us about this verse, which says, draw near to God. And he will draw near to you. That's in James four eight, draw near to God. And he will draw near to you. And a lot of times I fear this over and over because now I'm minister to physicians. I talk to a number of question physicians and what I often hear is that they don't really feel. The connection with the Lord. Yeah. They read the word, they believe God is there. We can believe it in our head, but do I know his presence? Just like you know, the presence of your spouse or your child or somebody that is in the room with you. Do you feel the same way with the presence of the Lord? And if not, that is something to examine and perhaps one of the reasons might be that we don't give the Lord our full attention. Three main reasons why we can't multitask God. Even it sounds so time efficient for us. Busy physicians, and I want to posture us out of the sense of. I'm not trying to make a bunch of rules or tell you what to do or be a legalistic about it and be all religious about it. It's just the sense of invitation how can we go deeper with the Lord than we have been. And I understand as busy physicians, we sometimes resort to whatever we can manage to do in the moment. And I wanna just acknowledge that and that is okay to say, you know, I'm trying to do the best I can, but also realizing there is more that we can do and that the Lord is inviting you to a deeper relationship with him. So here are the three points number one, God deserves your undivided attention. And it seems like a no brainer, but are we actually doing it? You know, it's the creator of the universe who wants to engage with us, who is there and to say, actually, I want to talk to you. What an amazing privilege. I'm getting all sorts of downloads just as I'm speaking to think about even that concept of God himself, the creator of the universe wants to engage with you. Let's talk about all those wonderful things another time. That is just marvelous by itself. He wants to engage in a conversation because he built you and me for relationship with him, and he longs for relationship with us. So let me ask you this question. If you gave your spouse or even your patient in clinic, like half of your focus. They would notice, right? This is just me when I go to take my kids to the pediatrician, or, well, I have been at a checkup or something. I don't really go very often, but I praise the Lord. I'm pretty healthy. But I find it actually a little annoying and I never really did that when. Physicians type their notes while they're also conversing with a patient. I understand why some people do that. I never felt like that was right. I really wanted to engage with my patient and I would write my complicated notes afterwards, and I saw pretty complicated children. But people notice, right? Or imagine, I don't wanna push on that too much because for some of you, that's just your workflow and necessity for survival, and I get that. But let's say you have a conversation with your children or your spouse and you're actually not paying attention, right? They notice my kids call me out all the time if I'm not fully there. And the same is true for God. God knows whether we are present so much more than your spouse or your children. The Lord is not just your background music for your busy day to pop in a little Bible reading in the background. Again, I'm not saying you cannot do that. You probably should. It's good to immerse yourself in scripture, but that shouldn't be the quality intimacy term of God. That's sort of the extra icing on the cake. He wants to speak to you. The question is, are you listening to him? And that is really what we should draw our hearts attention to. Are we listening to him? And the verse I wanna give you is Matthew 2237. You shall love the Lord with all your heart and with all your soul, and with all your mind. That means like give it everything you've got. I know that we have more on the schedule than just talking to the Lord. We have jobs to do and patience to take care of, but when we engage with him, we shouldn't multitask him. We should engage with all our heart and all our soul. And by the way, multitasking isn't just, i'm listening to the word of God and I'm also doing the laundry. And that's my quiet time. That's how it looks like. But also when you have real quiet time, we easily get distracted. I will do a separate episode on that because I think it's really helpful to think about strategies, how we can avoid that to get distracted during quiet time and remain focused. Point number one, God deserves your undivided attention. Point number two. Multitasking, muffles, the voice of God. Ooh, this is actually really good and really important. When re multitask, we have all sorts of other noise, whether it's actual physical noise or activities or things going on around us. It will drown out the still small voice that God and the Holy Spirit often speaks through us. So if we are to distract it and we are already having divided attention. We want to be able to hear the subtle parts of the Holy Spirit talking to us, and we will miss direction, comfort instruction, teachings that he's talking to us about. So you might hear words or maybe read the word of God or listening to a podcast, but. You miss the word of the Lord for you because you and I have divided attention. If we're not focusing on the Lord and intimacy and presence with him, we're gonna miss it all together. So listening to scripture is good, but don't confuse it with meeting Jesus face to face. I'm not saying that these activities, like listening to a podcast, even listening to the Bible audio Bible while you're commuting, that's all great. Immerse yourself with the Board of God. That is a good thing. You know, praise be to God. You're doing that, but that should be the extra or not the replacement for a time at the feet of Jesus with his word and in conversation with him. That just cannot be replaced. I hope I hammer this home. Well, and it might sound harsh, but I tell you it's really important and it is absolutely indispensable for Christian living and to be mold into his image. We cannot follow Jesus if we never actually follow him. What does a word of God say? Jesus himself says in John 10 27, my sheep listen to my voice. I know them and they follow me. You can only listen to the voice of the shepherd if you actually know his voice. For that, you need to spend time with him in an undistracted matter. Point number three. You are worth slowing down for and Jesus is worth slowing down for. You know, the world says, you know, hustle, work harder. Be busy, but the kingdom of God. And Jesus says usually the opposite. What does Jesus say? Abide in me. He says in John 15, four, when he talks about Thery and the branches, what does he say? He says, abide in me and I in you. We must abide in Jesus. So abiding is the opposite of hustle. Is getting close to him, is being with him, is following him. Cry time isn't another task and a thing on your to-do list. It is where your soul gets filled with a living ward the Holy Spirit with his presence, where you can experience his love, so you can pour that love out to other people I know you probably know this, because people say it all the time. When I spend time with God in the morning, actually my day goes better. Well, that is true. Why? Because you abided in him. He filled you up. Maybe you read the word and you didn't understand it all. But there is a transformative thing that is happening and your attention is set on not the world and the busyness of the day in that moment, but on the Lord, the attention is on Jesus. And you will have more clarity and peace going into your week when you meet God in silence first. The other scripture that I really love when it talks about abiding is First John to six. Whoever says he abides in him ought to walk in the same way in which he walked. When we abide. We are gonna follow Jesus. We're gonna do what he says. We're gonna follow him no matter what, if it's countercultural, et cetera. But we have to abide. We have to spend time with him. We have to establish a real relationship with him. So the three points, again, to summarize and to kind of wrap it up, number one, God deserves your undivided attention. Give him all that. You got your entire attention. Multitasking, muffles the voice of God. You won't be able to hear the voice of God clearly. If you're multitasking and not spending face-to-face time with Jesus and having intimacy and relationship with him. And that's probably the number one thing that I used to be most challenged with and I'm still growing in. And the number one thing that I feel I from other Christian physicians as well as other Christians I'm talking to. What do most people struggle with? Being sure they can hear the voice of God. Yes, you absolutely can. We are wired for that, but we won't be able to do that if we don't spend time. And I get so passionate about that because I love hearing his voice and we are wired for that. And the third part is you are worth slowing down for. And actually Jesus is worth slowing down for. What is my invitation to you? I invite you that this week. Get started. Give God at least 15 minutes of your full attention. No phone, no podcast, no multitasking. No holding the laundry, no running around. Just you for the Lord. Read your Bible. Maybe have a journal and just sit at the feet of Jesus. Sit with his word and it's okay to sit in silence as well. And actually not. Say too much and just see, what am I hearing? Maybe not with your audible ears and an audible voice, but the small voice that. Speaks to you and inside your heart what you might think, are these just my thoughts? But you would be surprised. Over time you will learn that those thoughts are actually God's thoughts and we can talk more about that in another episode. And I teach a lot about that, how to hear the voice of God and different things in the Heal the Healers Mentorship program. You're very welcome to join that. I hope this encouraged you today to really focus on intimacy with Jesus, to not multitask your quiet time, your time with God, and just spend undivided attention focused on Him, on his voice, on his word, and how much he cares and loves you. Now if you say, wow, this is amazing, Inga, thank you so much. But I feel like I need more accountability, or I just wanna go deeper and I wanna be mentored by another Christian physician to develop. A deeper relationship with the Lord to integrate my faith boldly to really be the hands and feet of Jesus in this busy physician world. Then I invite you to join me inside the Heal the Healers Mentorship Program, and we can walk this journey together. It is a mentorship and coaching program, so I'm doing a lot of teaching and mentoring in there as well as we pray together. And I spent at least one call a month to actually coach you whether it's professional questions you have. In terms of your physician productivity and all sorts of things, what, what that spiritual mentoring you need or even just setting personal habits and goals. We really, anything goes on those coaching calls. And then we have weekly conversations about the word of God usually centered around different topics. Right now we're talking about the healing ministry of Jesus and how you can walk in healing ministry and pray for people. So if that interests you, go to inga hoffman.com. Slash Heal the Healers Mentorship Program. Between each of those words, heal. The Healers Mentorship Program is a dash. I will put it in the show notes so it's easier for you to find and sign up. We would love to have you and it is a wonderful community. You will not find this level of coaching and mentorship. If you hired a professional coach, which I am trained in, I am a leadership and personal development coach with a job expert team. I've done this for 10 years. I've coached a physician for nearly a decade, so, this is really unparalleled what is out there and it will really help you in your walk of God and grow you as a person of faith and also as physician. So I wanna just pray over you and say, dear Lord, thank you for blessing everybody who's listening to the sound of my voice. Thank you, Lord Jesus. Thank you that you are with them. Thank you that you're drawing each and every one of those physicians closer to you and to the heart of the Father. Lord, let us spend more time with you and at your feet. And Lord forgive, we have, we have been rushed where we're trying to squeeze in some quiet time but actually don't really even giving your full attention. Forgive us for that and please help us to set our eyes and Yung be fully focused on you. So I bless all the people on this call. I bless all the people on this podcast that are listening. Help them stir up in them their desire to form a deeper relationship with you and help them to develop a consistent habit to sit down with you. Just like they have a daily meal. We have a daily meal feeding on the word of God feeding on new Jesus. And we thank you then for that. And in your precious name we pray. Amen. All right, you have a wonderful rest of your week and I talk to you next week in the next episode. Thank you.