Heal The Healers Podcast

34. How to Go from Devotionals to Reading the Whole Bible — Even with a Busy Physician Schedule

• Inga Hofmann • Episode 34

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You want to grow closer to God—but between patient charts, call schedules, and family life, your quiet time often feels rushed (or skipped entirely).

Here’s the good news: reading the entire Bible in a year takes only a few minutes more than most daily devotionals. In this episode, I’ll show you how to make that shift and experience deeper faith—without adding stress to your schedule.

Inside this episode:
 ✅ How long it really takes to read the Bible cover to cover (spoiler: less than you think)
✅ Why devotionals may still leave you spiritually hungry—and how to fix it
✅ Practical steps to create a sustainable Bible reading rhythm with a demanding medical career
✅ How to redeem “wasted minutes” (scrolling, email, news) for spiritual growth

You’ll walk away with a doable plan, renewed motivation, and the reminder that you do have time for what matters most.

📌 Resources & Links

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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.

👉 Enroll here to join the mentorship program.


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What if I told you the leap from your five minute devotional to reading the entire Bible in a year is really only a few more minutes a day? In today's episode, I'm gonna show you exactly how to make that shift even with a demanding physician schedule so you can stay closely and deeply rooted to the word of God and serve others./ Hey friend. Welcome back to the Heal the Healers podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Ingar Hoffman, if you don't know me nice to meet you. I help Christian physicians like you deepen your walk with God, hear the voice of God clearly, and live out your calling in medicine. Without neglecting your spiritual growth and your connection with your father. And we are doing this all by walking and wholeness in our physical body, in our soul, and most importantly in our spirit. And around here, we focus really on three core pillars. Bible-based healing, ministry, spiritual growth, and discipleship, and kingdom leadership. Plus occasionally I have a prophetic word or just a special revelation that the Lord is sharing with me that is on my heart that I feel to share with you, especially Christian physicians like you, so that we can grow in the knowledge of God. And discernment as well as understanding what is God's will for medicine and what is he speaking into the medical community at this hour. So I might throw those occasional revelations in there as I feel the leading of the Holy Spirit. Plus, if you are interested in growing deeper in the word of God, in growing in your ability to hear the voice of God more clearly and be led by the Holy Spirit as a Christian physician. Meanwhile, we're also having accountability and community and mentorship. Then my mentorship program, which is the Heal the Healers Mentorship Program is really where we do it all together, and if you prefer a complete, customized approach. Also offer one-on-one coaching. I've done that for years. So if you wanna learn more about that, you can go to the show notes where I link to the mentorship program. But let's just dive in today's conversation is all part of our spiritual growth and discipleship pillar. And because the way you engage with the word of God will determine how strong and steady you are on your faith, especially in the demanding word of medicine and being rooted in the word is absolutely critical to our relationship with our father and to be able to hear the voice of God more clearly, and also having discerned how we act that out and how we live it out in our daily lives. If you are no stranger to this podcast, and perhaps you even listened to this last episode, you would know my little rand and my little lesson on why devotionals aren't enough. And while I love a good devotional. I don't believe that they are spiritually strengthen us sufficiently to work with God more closely. So if you haven't listened to that episode, go one episode back, episode 33 via devotionals. Essentially leave your starving. But what I've found is that, earlier in my days as a Christian believer there were times where I was happy if I just made it to a devotional occasionally, maybe not even every day. And I spent times going through one devotional after another. And while that was wonderful, it really kept me from reading the Full Council of God. And again, you can learn more about this in the most recent episode, but I wanna share a little bit more. On a practical application. Okay, that's great. Devotions aren't enough. Now you want me to read the whole Bible, but how do I actually do that? And we touched upon that a little bit in the last episode, but not in such great details. I wanted to devote some extra time for that to really help you and bless you, so that you can grow in the board of God. Now, when I was in the stage of. Perhaps reading at least a devotional and had a Bible reading habit and was spending a few minutes on a devotional each day. Reading the Bible in a year felt like a huge leap. It felt like this humongous thing that I couldn't accomplish because up until a few years ago. I don't think I've ever read the Bible sort of cover to cover in order or in a particular structure. Yes, I did read probably the whole Bible sort of cumulatively a number of times, but not in a particular organized way. In, certainly not within a year. I mean, we're talking much, much longer. So I, I read it. Fairly slowly, and certainly there were passages that were really difficult. So books where I felt like I continued to drop off in Leviticus or somewhere in the, the books of Moses and the laws where it became really cumbersome and I didn't really quite understand. So reading the whole Bible felt like a huge leap, but I really wanted to do that. And the turning point was for me, when I really committed and said, okay. I finished reading the Bible from cover to cover but didn't do it in a full year. Took me much, much longer than that and I decided I wanna do it within a year, and I was actually amazed that it didn't take that long. So, first thing I wanna tell you that there is a huge, big myth around how long it actually takes. So let me give you a little bit of a truth bump here and maybe some statistics, so when you read a devotional a idea, you probably spend about five to 10 minutes to read through your devotional. Perhaps that includes some prayer or reflection. Time to read the Bible completely cover to cover in a year will take you about 15 minutes. Some say as little as 12 minutes a day. That is shocking. And actually not much more than you're already spending on your devotional time, but at least you get the full cons of God. And thinking about that was a real revelation for me. Look at this in a different way. A lot of times we feel probably that we don't really have enough time to read the Bible cover to cover in a full year. It seems a huge task in our head and we are already strapped for time as Christian physicians, so. It seems like I am not even sure when I'm gonna fit this in. Hello there. Anybody? Probably I'm speaking to somebody because that definitely felt true for me. Yes, I could read more on a weekend, but I felt like I could not manage the amount of time. Will take to read through the whole Bible, especially while having a busy call schedule, while having a very demanding academic job. And at the time when I had little kids and I was a attending physician at Harvard, at Boston Children's Hospital, I had a crazy schedule. We worked a lot of hours and I had two little kids. It seemed like mission impossible to get through the Bible. In a organized fashion within a year. But let's spin this around a little bit and from personal development, I learned this. We all have time. The question is where do we spend the amount of time? We all have the same 24 hours a day, right? So, but the question is how do we spend that time? And here's the thing. Many of us spent 30 minutes at least, or more per day on email. And that a lot of times it's just a organized system for others to bring you their agenda. A lot of email is probably a waste of time, but we also spend time, countless of hours per week, probably streaming shows, scrolling on social media, especially when we're tired and exhausted reading the news. So if you imagine you have 30 minutes a day for these tasks, which by the way, most people spend, at least that. If you wanna check and know the truth, how much time you spent on social, email, news, random stuff, check your phone. And in the settings I will tell you exactly what you spent. In terms of screen time per day, and it breaks it down exactly by the apps you're using. If you're brave enough, go do that, and you will learn very quickly where your time goes. But let's say you spent even 30 minutes cumulative on these random tasks, chances are it's more, and imagine if you applied these 30 minutes. To reading your Bible, you actually could read through the Bible in 160 days. That means twice a year through the entire Bible, and you would feed yourself the knowledge of God versus the garbage of social media and the news that just makes you anxious. You could read the New Testament or the Penacook, which is the first five books of Moses in just over a month. So the point here is we all have time, but are we using it wisely? And I'm not trying to say this to guilt or shame you into it. I just share this information to kind of open our eyes and encourage you. It is actually doable to get through the Bible in a year. And I would say it's actually easy, not just doable. So how do we get there? Now with anything new that we start in life, you really need a bunch of consistent steps. You need to have, number one, a habit. So you need to start daily and cough out time and select time, and commit to that timeframe to say, do or die. I'm gonna read my Bible at that hour of the day. Personally, I still prefer. The morning hours, whether it's right after my kids went off to school or I do it beforehand. Depends sort of if we are on a summer schedule or not, but basically pick a time that works for you. I encourage you to try the morning. Yes, I know mornings are hard. I'm not a morning person either, but this has been shown to be still the best time for me. Show up daily and create a daily habit to read the word of God. And then number two, start small. If it feels too much for you, the 15 minutes, start smaller, start with five minutes and then maybe it will take you a couple years to get through the Bible, but at least you're reading it and then expand gradually from there to move through the entire Bible in a year plan and just make a commitment and stick with it. And, you know, having accountability and a commitment is so important. And we talk about this all the time in my mentorship program. In Heal, heal. It's to encourage each other, to stay in the world, to encourage each other with the word of God is such a powerful thing. So that's the first thing. Start that habit. And then the second thing is choose your starting point. If you are already doing a devotional. Just go and do that. Step to move through the whole Bible in year, year. And if you are like, you know what? I haven't even been reading my Bible. I don't remember when the last time was. I had a good quiet time. Hey, sister or brother, here's no shame here. You just get started. It's good you're here and let's get started on a new habit, and I'm so glad that you're listening to this and just make that baby step commitment to get started on reading your Bible. And I would encourage you that you might feel like because you haven't been reading the word of God for such a long time, that maybe you should start with a devotional because it feels easier. And I get that, but actually I would say just jump right in and read the Bible in its totality and you can commit to reading it either in a year. Again, that will take you 15 minutes a day of You say, that's too much. I'm gonna commit to just reading the New Testament in a year or the Bible in two years and chunk it down in a smaller commitment. There are plenty of Bible reading. Plans in the Bible app, which you can download on your phone to pick any of these type of timeframes and help you get through the Bible. Don't overthink it. Just pick one. And then as I mentioned earlier, when we talked about habits, just pick a consistent reading time that fits your schedule. Now each of you will be different in terms of your schedules and whether you work shifts or how your call schedule works. Just pick something that works most of the time, acknowledging that there will be times maybe your post-call and will be really hard to read in the morning. Then just give yourself some grace and adjust, but pick a time that works for you. All right. Just to recap, so I encourage you to read through the Bible within a year instead of a devotional. That means you start a habit. You pick a plan that you can find in the Bible app, and then you commit yourself to that plan to read every day, and it will bless you. And then also pick a time that you can commit to reading every day. And after your Bible reading. We won't talk about this in detail in this episode, but you wanna spend some time and reflection and prayer, and perhaps even journaling. I highly recommend journaling to record your journey with the Lord. It is so eye-opening and you will learn so much from it and you will be encouraged reading that journal later. So I encourage you and I think I have another episode of that. Otherwise, I will share more about journaling another time. And remember, we all have time for something, but are we spending our time that is neither guaranteed to any of us or promised and very, very precious are we spending it? We're the most valuable person ever, and that is Jesus. Are we spending our time with him and in his presence to fill us with his wisdom and with his knowledge so we can go about our day in a beautiful way to be encouraged in the word of the Lord and can serve other people? And if we just imagine the time that we spend on other things each day that is not glorifying God, if we just spend some of that time to spend time with Jesus, the creator of the universe with God himself, what that would do for our life. So I wanna encourage you in this, and I really want to just tell you. Go give it a try. You might fall off your habit. You might have days where it doesn't work out. And that's okay. So before we jump off, let me just pray over you and bless you. So, Lord, thank you for everyone listening to the sound of my voice. And I thank you for every brother and sister and physician colleague that is eager to spend more time with you and in your word. And Lord, you see our busy schedules and how difficult it is sometimes for us to just. Make more room because we give so much of ourselves to other people that often there is no time left. It seems like to spend time for ourselves and time with you, but Lord. We trust you and we know that you long to spend time with us and that you encourage us to sit at your feet and in your word so that you can fill us. Your word says, we are. We are feeding on your word. We should. Abide in you Lord Jesus, so that we can be a good fruit. So, Lord, help us to abide in you, to sit at your feet, to read your Word, to get the full counsel of the Word. And for everyone listening, I pray that you help them to give them divine grace. Even strategies and ideas. Where they best position themselves to spend time with you at what time of the day. Help them to stay accountable and committed to the commitment to you and reward them richly with revelation and deeper understanding of your word. And even in their personal growth and their families in their workplace, that there will, that they will grow and be a blessing to others. And we thank you for all of that. In Jesus name, amen. So I hope this blessed you. And if you are a person that says, wow, this is great, but I want more guidance. Accountability. I really want to have other physicians that I wanna talk to that are Christian physicians, that kind of living the same lifestyle, who want to go deeper with God, then join the Heal the Healers Mentorship Program. There's a lot of teaching tools that I provide. I have a whole series on spending time with God. We talk about Bible reading and greater depth about prayer, prayer for patients a time of rest. All those type of things. I have a numerous series in there that will really bless you as a Christian physician. So it will provide also accountability and community. And not only that, you get a spiritual mentor who has directly walk this walk as a Christian physician and I hold your hand and you have others alongside you that encourage you as well. If you say, you know what, I'm not really into groups. I would rather be mentored and coached by you directly one-on-one. I offer that too. I've been a physician coach for many, many years, nearly a decade at this point. And, I would be delighted to mentor and coach you whether it's in a professional capacity in your work as a physician, or whether it's spiritual mentorship or a blend of both. Let's talk and figure out what working together would look like. And I put a link in the show notes how you can find out more. About working together as well as the mentorship program. Easiest. You can also always send me an email at Inga. At inga hoffman.com. That is inga ING a@ingahofman.com. So that's I-N-G-A-H-O-F-M-A-N n.com. And ask me questions there. We'll get in touch there if you wanna learn more about coaching or the mentorship program. Also don't forget to subscribe to this podcast so you never miss an episode and share it with other Christian physicians that you know, who are also eager to get in the world to want to grow in their faith. 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.