48. New Year (Re)Solutions with the Lord: Prayer, Reflection, and Direction for Christian Physicians

Hey Physician Healers! 

Welcome to a special New Year's edition of the podcast. 

We often think about New Year's resolutions, but what if we focused on solutions with the Lord? 

In this episode, I invite you to pause and reflect on the past year with gratitude—both the victories and the challenges—through a spiritual lens. I share personally about a year marked by deep growth, hard lessons, and challenges, and how the Lord faithfully met me in every season.

Together, we’ll:

• Reflect on 2025 with thanksgiving and honesty
• Create space to hear God’s voice for the year ahead
• Explore simple journaling and prayer practices to align your plans with His will
• Shift from striving and self-direction to Spirit-led clarity for 2026

This episode is an invitation into deeper intimacy with the Lord, ongoing sanctification, and a renewed way of entering the new year—not driven by pressure, but led by God. Much more fun this way.

Plus, don't miss out on the Heal the Healers Retreat (Jan 16-17 | Madison, WI) for a powerful experience where we’ll gather in person for prayer, teaching, and spiritual activation around hearing God clearly in this next season. You can still register until Jan 9th!

Register HERE 👉 https://www.ingahofmann.com/retreat

Happy New Year!

As you step into 2026, my prayer is that you do so with hope, peace, and His direction. 

Tune in now! 

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Transcript

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this is a time where many people focus on New Year's resolution, but. What about if we just focus on solutions with the Lord? What are the solutions for 2026 that the Lord has put in your path, that he has in store for you, that he is already dreaming about for you? And how can we tap into that? Stay tuned for this special New Year's episode just for you. Welcome back healers for another episode of this podcast. I'm so grateful to be with you today this is the first episode that I'm releasing into 2026, and as I was sitting. The Lord. I just really felt on my heart to share these type of things with you for this New Year's episode. I know we are now about just a couple days in as I'm recording this, so you probably had your New Year's celebrations and I am, sitting here this weekend with the Lord and plan my new year reflect on the past year. This is my favorite time of the year in regards to just. Gathering my thoughts of reflecting on this past year and looking forward. So that's what I wanna do on this podcast. I wanna leave a moment for reflection and also to pray over you, and then maybe some thoughts for this new year. As we embark on this journey for 2026 together, and so this might be a helpful one for you to go back to. If you are currently driving and not able to journal, I encourage you to go back to even this episode or take some of those questions and really journal on them in your quiet time or this weekend with a cup of coffee curled up on the sofa, whatever you like to do to help you reflect on. What 2026 may look like and also help you take inventory of this past year. So first, I wanna say at the outside I think it's a good practice for us to just give things to the Lord For this past year, for many of you, this might have been actually not that. Awesome. Of a year. For me personally, it was a very challenging year and I wanna be very transparent and raw with you on this podcast. It has been a year of. Tremendous victories. And not, I don't mean victories by, oh, I have this great success or these kind of things, but just walking with Jesus, tremendous victories, tremendous insight, tremendous growth. But let me tell you, there were all deep balance, deep challenges that I'm still. Working out with the Lord and it has been certainly a year off. More intense spiritual warfare. I've heard this from other people as well. And do you know, I personally have not been the type of person who blames everything on the enemy and spiritual warfare, but let me just tell you straight up, the enemy is real. he definitely has power, although not as much as Jesus. So we have already victory in Jesus, and we are more than conquerors in him. That's what the Bible tells us, right? But the enemy is real. He's trying to kill, steal, and destroy. And he will do anything in his power to get your off assignment of your purpose to, really get in your way, especially as you're making progress. Sometimes people say, and I think it is very true at least from my personal observation if you don't have a lot of resistance in your life, you're probably. Not pushing hard enough in things of the Lord. But if you do, ultimately you will get some opposition. And Jesus promises us that will be the case. So for me, that's sometimes a good benchmark these days to remember that if I'm facing resistance, if I'm facing actual spiritual warfare, maybe even persecution, those kind of things, that tells me there is probably something to it because. I'm getting that much resistance in all sorts of areas of my life. I wanna encourage you with that. So wherever 2025 left you. I want you to take a moment in your quiet time, in your reflection time, and just give opportunity to thank God for 2025. Think about some very specific things where you felt his hand was at work, and perhaps even take 10, 15 minutes. To sit and journal with a blank page and just write down all the things that come to mind that you're grateful for where you saw his hand at work. For some of you, these might be in the tiny little things you might feel gratitude for. The simplest things that we take for granted, a roof over our head, food on the table. Let us not ever take that for granted because. We don't have a guarantee for tomorrow. That's how it works. That is a wonderful, powerful exercise for you to just sit there and reflect with the Lord and say, Lord, I wanna give thanks for the things that happened in 2025. I wanna give thanks for even the hard things where I saw your hand at work and take moments to write those down, to pray, even pray them out loud, and just give thanks to the Lord. I did this a few days ago and I was amazed that I found a lot more positive things than I initially thought. And that is because we tend to think about the things that were hard or that maybe still are hard in your life right now, but we tend to forget the good. Stuff pretty quickly, don't we? That's just our human nature and writing them down and bringing them in Thanksgiving to the Lord is a beautiful thing. And I would just what pops in my head is actually this important Bible verse because, when we are having hard times we pray to the Lord, help me with this or that. But what the Bible really encourages us to do is to actually bring all our prayers and petition to the Lord with Thanksgiving, so the Bible says this to us, do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation by prayer and petition Thanksgiving, present your request to God. That's Philippians four, six. It is so easy and I can share that from personal experience to be anxious in our thoughts on what is going out around us, whether it's in your personal life, whether it's at your workplace, in the hospital, in the clinic you work at what even in the world in general. But the word of God encourages us that we bring, regardless of our situation. It says every situation that means. Every situation, no matter how grim it might look like to you in the natural that by prayer and petition with Thanksgiving. That we should present our request to the Lord, so we should thank him. We should actually already thank him ahead of time. What he is going to do in the area of our life that is maybe currently difficult? So thank him for the child in your life that you're praying over, that is turning around for the prodigal to return home, for finances to be turned around for a work situation that is. Currently difficult. Maybe a coworker who is really undermining and attacking you, maybe leadership making you feel like you're not valued with all these situations, go and present your request, not with God, please help me. These people are bad. I'm sick and tired. Yeah, we might feel like that, but the word of God encourages us. To not be anxious about those things and in every situation come before his throne come to him with boldness and actually come with not just petition I want, I need God help me with this kind of thing. He wants to hear from us, but he also encourages us to come with Thanksgiving. To come with Thanksgiving and to really stand on his word. And that's what I want to encourage you to do, no matter what the situation is that you're facing. That has been difficult this year. I have been there, I'm still there, and I'm reminded of this verse and it has really helped me. So I wanna encourage you with that particular verse, so your homework assignment for this exercises. Sit with the Lord for 10 minutes, set a timer, put some worship music on, if that helps you to get in the right atmosphere. And just write down a few things that he brings to mind that you wanna. Give Thanksgiving to the Lord for where he has shown up in your life, in the little, in the small things, but also in the bigger things, whatever it might be. And I believe when you look at that page, you will be really encouraged. I was amazed because after 10 minutes I ran out of space. And at first when I looked at that double blank page in this journal I'm working in, I thought, Ooh. I'm not sure that I can fill even a page, but before I knew it, I ran out of space and time because once we start, it's hard to stop because more and more will come to your remembrance and that's a beautiful thing. After you've done that, you might also wanna sit down and just give thanks to the Lord and reflect on where you have grown in your faith. So that might look like, where have you grown in your faith that will look different to each and every one of you, but perhaps there are areas where you have grown in, oh, I read through the Bible this year. Hallelujah. Or at least I had a consistent Bible reading time that I didn't have before. Or you say, whoa I have grown so much in my faith. I can really sit and pray and sit with the Lord and not be so disrupted. It might be anything like this. It might be just having an increased capacity for faith and starting to take the word and really believing it for yourself. So it might be something very concrete, what might be something a little bit more descriptive. But I encourage you to sit with the Lord and Take reflection of this past year and say Lord, really show me where I have grown. There might be things that come to your mind that are pretty obvious, but the Lord might even point of things in you that you're didn't even realize, and that's the most beautiful thing a lot of times when we do these exercise, it is very helpful to look back. So for me personally, there are certain markers in my life rhythms and things where I reflect back often based on certain events. So in more recent years, I have attended a conference regularly for the last three times now. So basically three years. In the Nashville area that's a Christian conference that has been very transformational. And now that I've gone a couple times, I can see the fingerprints of God in that track record and almost can tell based on the conference timing okay, let me reflect where I was last year. When I went to this conference and this actually conferences have done that for me for a number of years. I remember many years back, oh, that's probably. I'm guessing 10, 15 years back, I remember the first time I went to Hillsong a color conference, which is a women conference back then that didn't have anything in the us. So I went to London and I went there three years in a row all by myself. I took vacation from, my job at that time at Boston Children's. And I took my vacation because I wanted to be there. And at that season of my life and my faith, that really had a huge impact and blessing on me in that season of spiritual growth. And that conference did exactly that. I reflected back and I could see, wow, I was sitting here last year and these things came to pass. This is where I have grown, so this is a way for me to get a tangible. Example, because I can compare to these time points to see where I had been. For example, the first time I went to that conference in Nashville. I heard a lot of things that I've never experienced that were completely new and that I honestly was sitting there. Is this for real? I'm open, I'm seeing it in the word, but is this really what people experience in their spiritual lives with a word? And that conference was very heavy on prophecy and miracles and healing and those kind of things. And hearing from the Lord three years ago I was not. In the same boat and not on the same trajectory that I'm now or that I even was a year later. So things. That were highly unusual that I couldn't even wrap my head around, are now normal. So that's a practical example and I wanna encourage you to do that. The other thing, how you can see that you have grown spiritual in your faith, even in your spiritual discernment, is a much more subtle way. And I wanna give you this example because I have a feeling this will help somebody. There is a lot of things that I don't do anymore. Not because I'm trying to be legalistic about them, not because I'm like, I'm now a super duper spiritual question. I'm not gonna do X, Y, Z. And there are some things, I just have the awareness. These are not any good. These are probably some of them. My eyes were open. Oh, these are even a cold. I have to close those doors. These have nothing to do with the Board of God. There's those kind of obvious things, but then there are also those things that will show you how much you have grown in basically the fruits of the spirit and the lightness and image of Christ through the process of sanctification. So let me give you an example, just the other day. We watched a bunch of movies over the holidays and one of my teens is super into finance, is into business. And actually there's some really cool movies out there that tell some interesting stories that I thought he might be interested in. So there was one movie I watched probably at least a couple years ago. It's called Blackberry. You might have watched it. It basically is the story of Blackberry. Anybody old enough to remember the Blackberry? When I came out before there was an iPhone? There are days when we lived without an iPhone. Hallelujah. And so this movie was all about how the company started and how it became to fame and the whole kind of rollercoaster of that journey. I watched it on an airplane because that was one of the things that seemed interesting and not. Like a horror movie or something crazy. I watched that movie at the time. I was like, yeah, there's quite a bit of swearing in there, but I don't remember it bothering me that much. Maybe because I was on an airplane, but I watched it the other day and I was like, okay, I know there's some bad language there, but I didn't remember that it was that bad and I could not watch the movie anymore. I'm like, literally. I had to walk away just because my spirit was just so unsettled and grieved by all the swearing in the movie. And it was a bummer because the rest of the story is actually quite good. But quite interesting to think about, to talk about somebody like my team who was interested in business and entrepreneurship and all this kind of stuff. It just reminded me that. There was a time in my life this would not bother me at all. Maybe it would be a little too much. I was never big on swearing, but now my spirit inside of me was grieved. So that's just an example that before it would have annoyed me or I would've thought, oh, this is a bit too much. But now my spirit inside of me was grieved. And that is just an example how we can see in things that we are exposed to, that there is a shift in our spirit, how much we transform into the image of Christ. Now I'm not sharing this. For you to be super holy or for you to think that I'm super spiritual and super holy and super perfect. Not at all, but it really raised my awareness and I bet there are things in your life where you feel that way. If you walk with Jesus and you're running after Jesus with everything you got. And you are like, I want more of this life that the Bible talks about, that freedom of Christ, that deliverance, that healing, that whole different awareness theme things from a biblical perspective. You will find yourself being transformed. That is actually what we're supposed to do, right? The Bible's full of that. We are transformed slowly into the image of Christ as we read his word, as we immerse ourselves with his word as we spend time in him. I spent a lot longer on this point than our plant, but I think it is important because I do believe for this upcoming year. It's always important. We should always be on a process of running after Jesus and naturally being in love with Jesus and caring about being a true disciple, which means you, he's your teacher, he's a rabbi. You follow him, and you do as he says, right? What's that? First John two six whoever claims to live in him must live as Jesus dead. Or in the ears we will say whoever claims to abide in him must walk as Jesus walked. So there should be a fruit, right? John 15, Jesus talks about we abide in him and there is fruit. And if there is no fruit, that branch will be cut off. So it is a natural process in our spiritual growth. I could go on and on about it, but I want you to pay attention to it. And the reason why I believe this is important, I believe that ongoing sanctification and really going deeper is important. Jesus comes back for what? A spotless. Bright without wrinkle, without blemish, not with some religious question or with something you do on a Sunday or when you have time for after you've done everything else. No. He is coming back for a spotless bright. Please don't he. What? I'm not saying I didn't see Jesus coming back in 2026, although if he does, hallelujah. I'm ready. But just. I want you to sit in that reality and I want you to say, what? What will it cost me? Lord, what will it cost me to follow you? Despite my busy job as a physician? How can I follow you to be in that process? Lord, purify me. So that is my prayer really for you. Actually, it's not in my notes. Let's pray that right now. Lord Jesus, I pray that everybody listening to the sound of my voice, even over my own life, over my family, Lord. That we will enter 2026 as we are starting this year with a deeper hunger and desperation to be sanctified into, impressed into the image of Christ. Lord, that you transform us more and more into the image of Christ, that you take out everything that is hindering and put in us a pure heart and a hunger for your word. A hunger for the lost, a hunger to live a life. Really in alignment and worthy of our calling, and thank you that Lord, that through the Holy Spirit and through the power of your word, that we were immersed in it and that sanctification process takes place. Sometimes even in such a beautiful way as you transform us and our animals being that if thank you that it's not work or striving, but it's just yielding and abiding in you. Thank you Jesus for that. So I just felt to pray that over you. I really bless you for the new year, and my prayer is that you will. Press into that. It will be very important. I believe so. So the next part, I want you to reflect in your journal time. You have given things you have looked at. We have grown spiritually in my faith, and I gave you a sort of. Different ways to look at that. And now I really want you to think about what are your hopes and dreams for this new year? Now, there will be goals that you might have and some of them are hopes and dreams the Lord has put in your heart, and some of them. Your flesh and we all wanna do stuff right, and they might be good, but is it what the Lord has for us? And that can be a process to walk through. And in fact, that's some of what we will be doing at the Heal the Healers Retreat. So quick pitch, if you haven't signed up and you feel the stirring in your heart, January 16th to 17th. Madison, Wisconsin area. So it's coming up in just a couple short weeks, in exactly two weeks from this recording sign up because there will be room and space and time and leading into, impressing into this, Lord, what you have for me for 2026, in fact, I'm gonna give you some exercises to even just really learn how to listen to the Lord. What's he saying? For your upcoming year and how can you partner with the Lord to do that? That's a big exercise we're gonna do. So I'm really excited about it because I just did this for myself and it's fun to go ahead of you guys and test some things out and do some things with the Lord that we will be doing at the retreat. As you are thinking about these things, sure you can do them by yourself, but trust me, there is power being in a community of Christian believers that are sitting on a similar boat, at least the same boat as you Christian physicians and do this together. There something about the company of believers coming together, right? What does the word say? Where there's two or three together in my name as we are in agreement and hungry to seek the will of the Lord for 2026 for our personal life, for the medical community. The Lord shows up powerfully as we are yielding to that. It can be definitely done alone and the Lord has all sorts of ways, but there is power in doing these things together. I've found them quite transformational. I will put the link in the show notes to sign up. It's inga wolfman.com/retreat. Registration closes in the week you have. Just one week left. Then I have to close it and to finalize contracts, et cetera. Going back to your hopes, your dreams, your visions for 2026. Now I want to encourage you to step away. You can do your goal setting, exercise and your yearly planning. I do that, but I wanna encourage you to actually. Invite the Lord into this and also give him permission to sift through your dreams and visions and ideas that you're having and actually really ask, is this mine? Is this a good thing you put in my heart a passion? Is this an assignment actually from you? I don't even wanna do it, but I feel like you are leading me into it, whereas it's just my own flesh having desires and hoping that the Lord will bless it. We all have all those three the questions can, we sort through them and I pray that you take some time and invite the Holy Spirit to help you sort through those things. So pause and step back and ask the Lord as you're writing out ideas. Lord, is this me or is this my flesh? Or is this you guiding me towards something? So let me pray over that for a moment, Lord, as we're sitting here together, I pray over every. Physician's ear that is listening as they're making plans and setting their goals and having hopes, dreams, and visions for this coming year, for 2026. Lord, that, you will be in the midst and present. And that we will be yielding to your presence and to the nudging of your voice of the Holy Spirit to discern what is our flesh. Just wanting to make stuff happen because we just want it so badly. And what is guiding of your Holy Spirit and also what are some things. Passions and dreams and hopes you have put in our hearts and that we are passionate about, but that we maybe even seem stuck about, that you lord bring blueprints, ideas directions and marching orders for us to move forward in these areas. And particularly to discern the timing of what to do when, and not to put too much pressure on ourselves to make something happen that you. Or dared in your timing so that we walk and step with the Holy Spirit and pray that in Jesus' name. Amen. Another one that was not in my notes. God bless you. So I want you to do that exercise. Write some hopes and dreams and if you feel they are pretty concrete and you feel the blessing or the wind of the Holy Spirit on it, then also do the due diligence of writing them out. Put some frameworks and goals to them and actually some action steps you can take. But again, do it together with the Lord. It's much more fun this way and also much less painful. This is pretty much what I wanted to encourage you to do. So reflect on the past, reflect where you have grown, see where the Lord has guided you and has been with you, and then reflect on the new year. Now the last thing I encourage you to do and I wanna just do over you as well, is pray over the various areas of your life for this upcoming year. I know this is a very different podcast episode so bear with me. There's various areas of life and we could do a whole teaching series on that. I just wanna quickly pray into this and let's pray together that we are really yielding this year to God and not our own will. So let's wrap up with this. Jesus, I thank you for this company of physicians that are eager to seek your will that wanna grow in their faith and that are. Hungry for more of you, Lord, stir that desire up in them to be hungry for your word, to be hungry for the Holy Spirit's direction. Lord, I pray first of all over their spiritual growth and over their relationship with you because as we fellowship with you, everything else flows from there. Lord ignite their passion for intimacy and fellowship with you to sit at your feet To be sacrificing that time. It's a very different, difficult currency for us, a very high value currency, but that we could say, Lord, I'm gonna sacrifice that to sit at your feet because where else should we go? Where else will life come from? Where else will answers come from? And other than from you, I bless them. And declare over them that this year will be no longer the year where you're just feeling like you are in a spiritual, parched land. You're having struggle to read your Bible or to staying focused or to making it happen. Now, this year shall be the year where the Bible, the word of God will be a lamp until your feet and a guidance and where you cannot wait to crack open that Bible. I pray over you, that ignition of passion and fire in your heart and the thirst for his word like never before, but also the spiritual discipline and building the habits in the natural to say, I want this. And here is what I'm going to do to go after it. And Lord bless them in their endeavors to build habits and routines and rearrange their schedule to get serious with the word of God. We thank you and ask. We do that all together, Lord. Will you reveal more of you? To us by reading your words. So we thank you for God, Lord Jesus. I pray over increased spiritual discernment and also increased fellowship with the Holy Spirit. That you may know the Holy Spirit as your friend this year if he isn't your closest friend. May this be the year where you get to fellowship with him and be a friend, not just of Jesus, but of the Holy Spirit. We bless you in that. Lord. I also pray over their families, over their loved ones, those that have fallen astray, that you bring them back, that you help them in their marriages and their families raising their children or taking care of their elderly parents, Lord, that you give them. Wisdom to handle those day in, day out situations and that there will be a spiritual signpost and a guide and a light for their loved ones and family members in leading them in truth and leading them to you. Lord, we cannot lead anybody. The Holy Spirit does, but let us be good examples and let us. Just be loving and kind. I pray that also for myself, Lord, that we are just having this humbleness about us, this meekness, very unpopular word in these days. Lord, pray over their careers, over their medical careers and their assignment, Lord, that you give them divine wisdom. How to care for each and every patient that you give them strategy. That when they're facing challenges with a broken healthcare system and feeling disenchanted and, upset about the limitations we have for caring for our patients because of a broken system that you give them new ways of doing things. Some of you will get new strategies to switch things around quite a bit and do things a different way. I also pray that those who might need to have career transitions, that the Lord will be so gracious to open up path and doors for you and guide you through that process. That there will be no fear in that process, but trust in the Lord. And for some of you, there are promotions up on this year that you would take those promotions. As humble promotions from the Lord you ask the Lord to equip you for these upcoming seasons and the leadership capacity that you need, not only within yourself, but also in your faith, in your walk with Christ to lead those who, the Lord has entrusted you to lead with greater capacity and with greater clarity. We thank you for that. And Lord, where there is confusion for many of the physicians listening about their assignments. About what their mission even supposed to be, where they felt like I'm going into medicine to serve people as a mission field. They're feeling disenchanted, Lord, that you give them a new fresh hope in you and give them clarity of direction. You're calling us. Not a mistake. You're calling us a divine assignment. I pray that you won't be worn out or discouraged of the broken system that the enemy is trying to tear down that you won't be broken down or discouraged working in this broken system that is on very wobbly feet, but that you actually can jump ahead and go back to your original mission. And your original passion, and then what will make a way for you to exemplify that and demonstrate that and give you venues and opportunities to live that out in greater clarity. So there might be transition for just, a bunch of you this year, but I just encourage you, all of you, to not grow weary and doing good because in due season you will run right the harvest that the Lord has a plan for you. And I pray, Lord, that you draw them closer, they can actually hear your plan and get direction. So we thank you for that all in Jesus name. Amen. So thanks. Thanks for hanging out with me. I know this was very different. I just felt like I really wanna bless you this new year. I wanna give you tools to start the year with the Lord. And again I encourage you to come to the retreat. I know there's hindrances. I know it's coming up fast. But I believe you will be blessed, and this is a year we need to be more equipped, more than ever. Just today I have my own personal healthcare experience of how broken the system is, and I don't think anyone else can confidently say that it will get better anytime soon. In fact, I'm pretty confident it will get much worse and we cannot. Be not equipped for that time as this. You have to be equipped. That means be in the word. Learn how to communicate with the Lord and the Holy Spirit. Be in prayer and stay in your faith. Be rooted. Let those roots go in deeper. That's what you should spend most of your time on. I really encourage you in that, I know this doesn't sound like a high note ending, but I think it's really important. So God bless you all. You have a wonderful start of your new year. I'm excited to see some of you at the retreat and I will keep on putting podcast episodes out share and subscribe to show. It really helps. I want to get this and ask many question physician's hands as possible. So you are part of that. You can help by sharing it with a friend by subscribing. By writing and reviewing the show. These are all simple things that cost you no time, no money in doing so, but is a big blessing and actually helps to create a shift in healthcare by bringing the kingdom of God into medicine. Thank you, Jesus. Have a wonderful day, and talk to you soon. Bye-bye.