57. Christian Physician: Are You Compartmentalizing Faith and Medicine?

You can love God… be fully committed to your patients… and still feel like you’re living two separate lives.

One in medicine.
One in your faith.

For years, that’s exactly how I lived.

In this episode, I’m reintroducing myself and sharing my journey—from growing up in Germany to training and practicing as a pediatric hematologist-oncologist—and the subtle way I began to compartmentalize my faith along the way.

I was praying.
Leading Bible studies.
Showing up to church when I could.

But underneath it all… I was still operating from control.

Medicine trains us to rely on ourselves.
To carry the weight.
To make the decisions.

And without realizing it, that mindset can quietly shape our relationship with God—where prayer becomes reactive, outcome-driven, and God becomes someone we consult… rather than follow.

But there’s another way.

In this episode, I’ll walk you through:

•  What it actually looks like to live on “parallel tracks.” 
•  How performance and control show up in our faith 
•  And the invitation to surrender—not just outcomes, but your entire way of practicing medicine 

This is the beginning of a deeper shift.

A move from striving… to partnership with God.

If this resonates, you’re not alone—and you don’t have to figure it out on your own either.

👉 Join the Heal the Healers Facebook community to continue the conversation
👉 And make sure you’re on the waitlist for the Heal the Healers Boston Conference (Oct 30–31, 2026)—a powerful space for physicians to be restored, equipped, and activated: Go to 👉 https://ingahofmann.com/events

You were never meant to carry this alone.

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

📍 Mark your calendar: October 30–31, Boston, MA
The Heal the Healers Conference is coming.

This is more than a conference—it’s a space to encounter God, be restored, and be equipped to live out your calling in medicine.

This event is for physicians and healthcare professionals!

👉 Join the VIP waitlist to be the first to hear when registration opens and get early bird registration rates to tickets:
https://ingahofmann.com/events

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Transcript

0:00

I'm a good physician, you feel like you love God, you're doing all the right things on paper, but something just feels off and disconnected, like part of your life belongs to the Lord and another part. You carry on your own going through the motions in medicine, doing your job, et cetera. If that resonates with you, this episode is for you. Hey, welcome back friends, and welcome back to the Christian Physician Podcast, formerly known as Heal the Healers. I know I changed the name a little while ago, and I hope that helps more people find me. If you are new to me and we haven't met, I'm Inga Hoffman. Pediatric hematologist oncologist by training, and now I mentor question physicians and coach them and help them to hear the voice of God and integrate faith and medicine in a real practical way because I just love that integration of life. So in today's episode, I wanna be a little more personal. Not that I haven't been in the past, but I really wanna introduce myself and my story and my journey and share a little bit how my journey looked like. I shared some of that in the very early podcast episode, so you can certainly go back to that. And there will be probably bits and pieces of my testimony, but I just had the unction that I should. Share a little bit how my Faith journey, my Walk with God started how it looked like over the years through medical training, residency, fellowship, you name it. Because I have the feeling that there are many of you that are listening. You find yourself in these different parts of my story. Not that our stories are the same, but we are all on a journey and we are going through these seasons and sometimes personally I find it really helpful to hear somebody else's testimony, to give me hope for my season and my journey and see that there is another way to look at things that there's hope, that there can be a different future maybe than you find yourself in now. And I pray that this will encourage you because I believe you are here, you listening because you love God. Or maybe you're curious about faith in medicine. You're committed to your patients. If you're doing research, you're probably very committed to that and really passionate about your research and your clinical work, and you're trying to do all these pieces really well. But if you are honest, it can feel like you are living in two lives. It's a bit like parallel tracks. So let me share a little bit about my story. I've been a believer since high school. I actually had a really wonderful friend in high school in Germany share his faith in a French class that was taught by a Moroccan French teacher. I'm not sure if he was really a committed Muslim. But anyway, he came from a different country with a different culture, and for him to allow my friend to share about his question, faith was was really fun and perhaps unusual. Long story short, it's a story for another time, but I became a believer through his testimony and actually the first testimony he shared in that very French class was how he's hearing from God. Crazy that it comes full circle in my life now that I just love to hear the voice of God and help other people really tune in and listen, build a relationship with the Lord. Understand how we can all hear from him. So my faith through my high school years, the through graduation and medical school was really important to me. It definitely carried me through medical school, through residency, all the ups and downs of training. In fact, it was really by, by the Lord's leading and him opening door that I opening doors that I got into medical school. Right away after graduating from high school. By the way, if you're wondering why did Inga skip college? Is she like super bright or something? No. It is just a different system in Germany. So throughout these years in training and then as a attending, I prayed for my patients, quietly by myself if there was something that I was struggling with or felt like they were in everyday tough spot. And as a pediatric oncologist and transplant physician, that happened a lot. I went to church whenever I could, but you know how it goes. Like you have a busy call schedule, especially during residency. That was really hard. Obviously we move a bunch throughout our years of training. So you find a new church community. Basically I did the best I can. I did the best I could at the time. There were even times where I led small groups. I remember during residency I brought physicians together and we started a little prayer meeting, talked about our faith, and started a little Bible study and that was actually amazing. And I did a similar thing as a junior attending where we started a prayer meeting that then led into a really, a wonderful, a Bible study you can call it, or discussion around Christian leadership, servant leadership and our role as physicians. And that group grew from, a couple of us decided to pray for a colleague who was battling cancer at the time. And the group probably grew to a dozen people or so in the middle of busy clinic days. Quite amazing. So by all accounts throughout the seasons, I think the Lord really shaped me and he provided opportunity and he nudged me in different ways. And it seems like I was doing well, right? I was. Doing all the things that we are supposed to do as Christians. Especially coming from an evangelical church kind of mindset. And if someone looked from the outside, they would probably say, she is integrating faith and medicine really well. I'm mean, I was hosting bible studies in small groups and that was really on my own accord. It wasn't like I was part of CMDA or some organized group. We just organically started these things and it was amazing. I'm not discrediting any of that. Praise the Lord for these marvelous times and I'm curious. Only the Lord knows what, what's going on with this, how he's used that I might never find out, but that's okay. I just loved pouring into people, but I also realized that there was something missing, and I think there was a part that I didn't fully understand at the time. I believed in God. I certainly involved him in parts of my life very actively, very intentionally, like I just cheered. But it seemed, if I'm honest, and if I look back, it always seemed like I was living life on two parallel tracks. There was my faith in one corner. I tried to go to church whenever I could, given our busy schedules and even got involved. As I mentioned, I even let small groups outside of the kind of hospital medical environment and and then there was work. And it was a parallel universe. They weren't really connecting in a real tangible way. So I was more toggling between these two worlds, even though it looked like integration, but it was a toggling and bouncing back and forth versus being a one integrated thing, if that makes sense. So essentially medicine was my day job and faith was something I did alongside on the weekend. And if I could squeeze in some quiet time, of course I would pray for difficult situations. Maybe when I would. Was overwhelmed maybe when I was struggling with a difficult sort of academic politics situation or a difficult patient, meaning somebody who was just really struggling or there was a poor prognosis. But if I'm honest, my prayers were more, they were quick and needs-based, reactive perhaps. And I wasn't really. Looking for relationship, but rather for, I know I can come to God and hear all my things that I am asking for versus asking him to speak into my life. I'm, I ask him essentially for help. It's more Hey, can you help me with X, Y, Z? God seemed to be more my assistant than my father. That's probably a really good way to describe it, and perhaps you find yourself in those very same moments and this resonates with you. I'm sure I am not alone with this experience. See, what I learned is you can believe in the Lord with all your heart and still live divided. And by saying that, I don't mean divided like you are in outrageous sin and then still show up at church. No, it's your heart posture. It's where you track with life. Again, parallel tracks are probably a good way to describe it. And I think that's where many Christian physicians find themselves. You love God. You are sincere in your faith. You're trying your best with the little time you have, but life feels a bit compartmentalized. God is present that he is more on the periphery and not fully integrated, and the problem is that can feel very normal. And I would say that's probably not only true for Christian physicians, but for a large majority of the body of Christ that we do our church thing on the weekend as our own personal thing. When people say to us, yeah, faith that. Good for you if it helps you, but it's not really my thing. And that's actually how we live. Our life, we push that to the side as our thing. Versus it is actually consuming my very inner most being. So you can think about it more like coexisting with God and looking back, I would describe that season as. A way of coexisting. Again, parallel tracks is a good image here. He was there. I believed in the Lord, and I still do, of course, and I invited him at times of need and of frenzy and of struggle. And occasionally I might praise him for something good, but that wasn't my default posture. I wasn't truly partnering with Jesus in anything. I wasn't walking with him moment to moment. I wasn't depending on him fully. And I didn't even realize that I was missing out. I thought that was the normal state of affairs. And I think honestly when we look at the state of the church, especially if the Western American church, although times in Germany, that was very similar, that's how most Christians, live their life. And I wanna pause here and remind you point number two, that this coexisting life of living a life of parallel tracks can feel very normal, but it is not at all what living in the kingdom of Jesus, living in the kingdom of God following Jesus or what he even described, or what his life looked like or what he called us to do looks like at all. We are totally far off. When we look at these two things, so parallel track is not kingdom. Levi, the culture of medicine very much trained us to rely on ourselves, trust in our own knowledge, stay in control, perform at higher level, which is good. I'm all for excellence, one of my core values, but none of these things really are inherently wrong yet. They can subtly train us. They can subtly train us to live independently from God even as believers because we basically only call him when we believe we need help based on how we want our life to go or what we think is right. And may I remind myself and all of us. That we never have the full picture and that we usually don't know what is best to us. That's just the truth, and if I looked at my prayer life during that time, it was inconsistent, right? I squeezed it in when I could, was if I had a quiet time routine and I read a little Bible and I prayed, I tacked on the prayer because that's what you're supposed to do, right? You're supposed to say something. But that was it. Lord, bless my baby with me. Give me wisdom, blah, blah, blah. Generic flat prayers. There was not really any relationship. It was just a one-sided conversation. There were occasional times, I think I would pray throughout the day. That's usually a moment of desperation or occasionally in utter gratefulness. Didn't happen all that often. I think maybe I'm seeing it more bleak in hindsight than it was, but really it was, these quick requests. It was like, God, help me with this. Can you fix this situation? I need some inside here. God, I'm so tired. Help me to get out of here on time so I can pick up the kids from school. Whatever it might have been. But it wasn't deeply seeking him, his presence, his will. I wasn't surrendering the outcomes. I was making requests based on my interest and what I felt was right, and I certainly wasn't asking him to lead with all my heart. And that is another little teaching point. We can have these half-hearted prayers that feel like we are doing something that feel like we are. Trying to stay in control, but they really don't go anywhere. That's why it sometimes feels like your prayers just hit the ceiling. Because It's not like you're not trying or you're not desiring, but it's going through the motions and it's not even your fault or my fault. It's just like we might have never being taught another way. We've never maybe passed to say. This feels off. Maybe I need to do this differently. Lord, can you please help me? And he's actually very eager to help. So we are stuck in these quick prayer cycles, surface level prayers, emergency prayers when we are like help. Please help. But we are still starting holding on to our reins, to our control. We're asking God to help us instead of allowing him to actually lead us. And that's a very different posture. One is God help me, or worse, we do this a lot in decision making. We, we may be having a hard time deciding something related to a job or a career decision or personal decisions. And we lean maybe towards one way. We often just, we pray, but we more or less trying to ask the Lord to bless our decisions. I think we do that a lot more than we realize. So that's another thing where we actually not. Surrendering where we are just asking the Lord to bless us and he is blessing his people and he loves blessing us. He is our good father. He doesn't run out of blessings, but our heart posture can really stand in a way of actually receiving a blessing that is truly meaningful. And I'm just reminded when I share this testimony that our testimony is actually matter, right? Does the Bible say in Revelation they overcame by the blood of the lamb and by the word of their testimony? Revelation 1211. This is part why I feel like sharing testimonies is a really important process because we can encourage one another, it helps us to overcome, right? Sometimes you hear somebody else's story and it really encourages you, or you might feel like listening to this story that we have similar struggles and I wasn't always the. Christian Hyperspiritual, superhero. And I still, I'm not by the grace of God, I'm not living parallel tracks anymore and I will share a little bit about this next time. The Lord really woke me up and help me to there's a whole different world, and I will share about that next time, but I wanna encourage you, your story matters as well. Whatever the Lord is bringing you through right now, whatever challenges you might be facing I encourage you to go to the Lord and surrender versus asking him to fix stuff. I believe that's actually where the real breakthroughs start. When we say, you take the situation, like the song Jesus take the wheel from once in a lifetime ago kind of thing. But there is something about that, right? It's about surrendering the situation that is too difficult for us to handle. Where we don't see an out, whether it's a personal thing or a professional thing that you're facing right now, I feel like that's actually really for somebody right now, so that you surrender that fully be okay to say, Lord, I'm sorry that I just made request and surrender your situation to him and say literally. You, Jesus. You take the wheel, you take control from now on and you show me what to do because clearly what I've been trying to do is not working. Man. That's a word for somebody out there. Be encouraged. The Lord is really encouraging you today. And one other scripture that came to mind that I wanted to mention earlier, it's this part when I realized. That when I was living these parallel tracks, that there was actually a different reality. That I have one life that I surrendered to Jesus and now he is fully. Taking a hold of it and I'm surrendering and saying, you Lord, do something with it. Because in Galatians, 2 20 it says I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me and the life I now live in the flesh. I live by faith in the son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. That is so powerful. W we are crucified with Christ. If you are no longer alive and Christ now lives in you, that's actually very beneficial because he cannot get a as easily offended. And the more we crucify ourselves and saying, you know what, me, doesn't matter. That doesn't mean. You should be getting abused or something. But that means let me put my own desires to the side and surrender to the Lord because he lives in me. He gave his own life for me. And by his power, I now can live and do live a more a full life, an integrated life. So I really wanna encourage you with that scripture and. I would just say reflect on this podcast today. And let me just ask you, do you feel like your faith and your work are fully integrated or are they somewhat unparallel tracks like mine were, and I encourage you to just invite God into this situation. Into your whole life. Not just certain moments or parts on it, not just the Sunday mornings and the quick time when we crack open the Bible, but all of it. cause he already knows everything, every about you and me anyway. And that allows us to truly begin to partner with him versus just relying on ourselves. And if you find yourself, you have been living in these parallel tracks, please hear me. Don't beat yourself up. There's no condemnation who was in Christ Jesus, right? There is no judgment. There's just oh, maybe there is a different way. And I wanna encourage you with that to, this was me for many years. That was my reality, and I honestly didn't realize what I was missing until. Certain parts in my life shifted and I will share that in the next episode. And it was very powerful. My life has been transformed ever since. And I'm going to share with you what changed and what propelled me forward too because it wasn't just a small adjustment, it was a major radical shift, but. At the other hand, it wasn't really much me doing it was me just sliding into surrender. So more about that on the next episode. Now, if this episode resonated with you, number one, please subscribe and cheer and share this episode with others and review the show. It makes a huge difference and it really blesses me. Also, if you would like to have more conversations about this and other episodes and have sort of a. After podcast chat. A podcast club, so to speak. Join my Facebook community. It's completely free. It's called Heal the Healers, A Kingdom Community for Question Physicians. I will link it in a show notes. Come there, join us. And connect with other physicians who are on a similar journey also. Lastly, super important. I know I give you a bunch of to-dos. So number one, subscribe and cheer. Number two, join my Facebook community. And number three, super important. I will be hosting. A major event in Boston, Massachusetts, October 30 and 31st. Registration is not yet open. I'm working on that. This is gonna be a wonderful conference, and we have literally the Lord open the doors to have world class speakers, meaning theologians, practitioners, ministers, people who know the word. And who walk by the Holy Spirit as well as physicians and scientists to really help you to see the full spectrum of integrating faith in medicine. We were gonna talk about healing and miracles. From a theological, scientific view, it will blow your mind and you really don't wanna miss it. So in order for you to be notified when registration opens and get some of the early perks for those people that are on my email list and in my inner circle of community and friends, and you should be on it, I highly encourage you. Don't miss out. Go to the link called inga hofman.com/events. Again, inga hofman.com events. I have a wait list there ready for you that gets you on my email list. That will make sure that you get flagged that you're interested in the Boston Conference as well as other events I'm planning already. I have a lot that the Lord has pour into me. I feel like I'm getting all excited about. So you wanna be in the room, you don't wanna miss out. And the tickles, especially the inner circle tickles, will probably fly off the wall really fast and have some special perks there for you. So please go sign up for that so you don't miss out. This specific event in Boston in October will not just only be for physicians like my other retreats. I will open it up to other healthcare professionals. Nurses advanced practitioners like nps, PAs, et cetera people in the professional counseling world you can find more details on the wait list. You will hear more about it. But please mark your calendars, sign up for the wait list. This is something you do not wanna miss out on. So with that enough said, God bless you. And it is time to integrate faith and medicine and really love fully. I cannot wait to talk to you on the next episode where I will share about that radical shift that occurred. God bless you, talk too soon.