58. From Striving to Surrender: Integrating Faith and Medicine Through Prayer

What if the breakthrough you’ve been praying for in medicine isn’t more effort… but surrender?

For years, I lived what many Christian physicians quietly experience—faith and medicine running on parallel tracks. I prayed, I showed up, I worked hard… but deep down, I was still striving, still carrying the weight, still treating prayer like a last resort instead of a living relationship.

Everything shifted in a moment I’ll never forget—praying for a critically ill pediatric bone marrow transplant patient during COVID. What started as desperation turned into something unexpected: a real-time, Spirit-led conversation with God. Specific prayers. Clear prompting. And then… watching a miracle unfold.

In this episode, I share how that moment marked the beginning of moving from striving to surrender and what it actually looks like to integrate faith into your everyday practice of medicine.

We talk about:
 – Why integration starts with heart posture, not more strategies
 – How to stop comparing your spiritual journey
 – What it means to hear God’s voice in real time
 – And how small steps of obedience can change everything

If you’ve ever felt like you’re toggling between faith and medicine… this is your invitation into something deeper.

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Transcript

0:00

If you are me, perhaps your faith sometimes feels a bit disconnected from your work, and I just wanna encourage you and say, what if the reason your faith still feels in that place of being disconnected and running on these two parallel tracks? What if it's not because you're doing something wrong, but because you never really stepped into or shown or have heard and understood what full surrender really looks like. Because for me, everything really changed when I stopped holding back, when I dove with my head right in and and even was prepared to look a little foolish. If that kind of strikes a chord and resonates with you, stay tuned for after the music and I will be right back. Hello there friend. So excited to be with you today. Welcome back to the Christian Physician Podcast. I'm your host, Inger Hoffman, a pediatric hematologist, oncologist and transplant physician by training, and now I mentor Christian physicians, coach, mentor, equip physicians to hear the voice of God to integrate faith and medicine into their life fully so they can live out their calling boldly and without holding back. And really, this episode is all about that because that has been my journey. So I entitled this Christian Physicians, how I Went from Striving to Surrender. In my last episode, I shared what it looked like for me to believe in God. I shared a little bit about my testimony, some of the earlier days and then throughout my career, like I prayed at times, but that felt like my life was running on two parallel. Tracks faith over here on weekends and when I could squeeze it in. And maybe I made some strides on quiet time routines that were hit or miss depending on the season and then on the other hand, there was my medical career, my academic career as a physician scientist and so forth. And honestly I didn't even realize at the time that I was living in sort of two separate worlds, even though it felt like I'm doing the best to integrate the things. And I wasn't even about being shy to share that. I'm a Christian. I'm a lot more bold now, but it wasn't like I was afraid to share. But it was just com compartmentalizing my life. But honestly, as I said, I didn't even realize that was taking place. And today I wanna go a little bit into the part of the story that really changed everything for me and how things shifted from there. And how I went from striving and medicine, trying to carry everything on my own, relying on my own strength, on my productivity, on my leadership skills, et cetera, to surrender. And it wasn't perfect and it wasn't overnight, and it's always so beautiful to see your story in hindsight, and I just hope and pray that this story today, a little part of my journey, will encourage you out there to not give up, to lean in, to not be yourself up. That things haven't always been perfect or certainly please. Oh, this is. Not in my notes, but I'm feeling this really strongly. As you hear and listen and tune in. I want you to be very mindful not to compare because we are very good in medicine to compare ourselves to one another and get more into this comparison mode that sometimes breeds envy, jealousy, striving stress, overwhelm, feeling not good enough. Please don't compare. Because I bet you there are many things in your life that I would just adore and I look up to, and I would love to learn from you. And in the same manner, there are some things that I hope that I can bless you with. So please don't compare. I know people say this and we say this half-heartedly and it seems like a throw away saying. We all on our own journey, but it also is true. So I'm gonna share a little bit about my journey, what really changed and how I shifted from how I related to God and how. Even quiet time went from a chore to an intimate relationship with Jesus and how that also influenced how practice, medicine and what I'm doing now. And my hope is that through this episode that maybe you start recognizing some areas. That are showing up in your life where you might feel like, oh, I'm striving here more than I should be. And I am not fully present with the Lord. It's this parallel tracked life, and I hope that this episode encourages you to just trust the Lord, step out and really earnestly seek him. The Bible says, if we earnestly seek him, he will be found. And that should be an encouragement to all of us. He's never far, the Lord is near, he's with us. It's often that we need to learn how to tune in, pass, reflect, and surrender. All right picking up on my last episode. So I shared a little bit on my sort of earlier years in med school residency, fellowship, even early attending life. What you heard in that last episode was really how my life looked like. But at some point I started to recognize there must be more to any of this, and certainly Intri. I asked myself, oh man, I want more on God. But I didn't really know how. I am always grateful for all the wonderful churches I've been part of. I have to say, I think there was something that I just sensed the missing link. That I admired, I honored the leaders that have been under the pastors amazing good teaching. But I felt like I wasn't really seeing perhaps, or didn't have my eyes open to somebody who really embodied like I'm carrying Christ with me wherever I go. It was again, like I said in the last episode, a lot of times we toggle between our workplace and our church environment and that's pretty much the environment I've witnessed. And so there wasn't really a spark of inspiration where I saw a person somewhere over in the church and I'm like, I wanna be like that person. That never happened to me. I have to say, when I share this. Story and really the Lord just took me on my journey and he did it all by himself. How wonderful is that? Imagine that. And it wasn't any of my doing or some church leader that kind of inspired me to be a different way but I do think when I look back that I had this hunger of there must be more and there must be a different way to live my faith out boldly and to really hear the Lord. Because at that time, I would probably say for the most part of my Christian life. I didn't really feel like I could hear from God. There were circumstantial, the arc of my story and my life. Oh, I could see how God, got me into medical school and the different type of teaching and educational environments. He threw me in, like in terms of residency at UCSF and Fellowship at Boston Children's, and I believe the Lord's hand was in there. So could. See it in the bigger arc of my story, but not in the, is he actually speaking to me in the moment? Basically, I get through my day. I was pretty much relying on my own strength. I did the best I can. I prayed when things got hard and when I got desperate and. I tried the best with my quiet time and I have a lot of early episodes on that. And I teach a lot and hammer this home. You have to be in the word of God, and you will see in this testimony, why this is so important. But there was this hunger inside of me not just believing in God, but actually to know him. I just couldn't phrase it this way, perhaps I prayed when I could squeeze it in and I read my Bible and you probably have been on the same rollercoaster, right? So there are stretches of, ugh, I have to be really doing better with my quiet time because that's what we're supposed to do as questions, right? We understand, especially if you are really in any environment, but I feel like in evangelical environments that I grew up with, or most of my Christian life, I was okay, I need to have my quiet time. I need to have my spiritual disciplines, and then things will be better and this is what I ought to do. This is the chore on my Christian life list, and that's how it often felt like a chore. And it was one of those things. Where I had fallen off the bandwagon again to be consistently in my quiet time. And so I decided again, once more, like probably the hundredth time. I don't know how many times, but many times, right? We go through these cycles. I have to be consistent with my quiet time. So let me just start a new habit. I'm a physician leadership coach. So my key pillars I always teach on as leadership identity, leadership skills, performance habits, which is really all about. Forming good habits and creating those habits in your life that work for you so you can crush your goals. So I'm all for goal setting, habit formation, and really do that well. And I should know how to do this right, and I do, but. Even I have fallen off the wagon. And and then there's mental mastery, which is thinking about all things mindset. So that's my physician success. DNA method I've taught, I coached, I mentored people in these realms of framework for almost a decade. Meaning here I find myself working on one of my own habits, which is getting back to quiet time and start to read the Bible again consistently. And I started with a devotional because I was easy, right? And I would go in the Bible, I would pick a devotional and I would read that in the morning, at least that checklist mentality. Gave me the opportunity to start to form habits, which was awesome. Ultimately, that translated into me then starting to actually read scripture, meaning the Bible in a year, versus just going through devotionals, and I don't wanna digress, but basically read the Bible, don't stick to devotionals. They're nice, cherry on top. But don't make devotionals your primary Bible reading because you are gonna miss out on major passages of the Bible and you are missing the storyline, the bigger arc of the storyline. But I don't wanna digress. I preached this on this podcast a gazillion times. So anyway, I was in this habit formation and during this time one of my patients got really sick and just similar to other times, I would start praying for this particular patient. In the first light felt like I'm doing it like I did in the old days. I have a difficult patient. I'm really desperate. I'm at the end of my rope here and Lord, please help. I want this patient to pull through. You can make it happen. And so I started to pray and I will probably share this in detail again another time. And you can listen to one of my, probably the first or the second episode, go ahead and listen to that detailed testimony. But essentially I began to pray and versus just saying, God, help me, the Lord, really, I cannot even describe it. Let me and nudge me in a beautiful way to not just dump my words and my request in front of him, but sit in his presence. And I began to hear. I been keen to hear and felt the nudging of the Holy Spirit, what specific body parts, organ systems to pray for. And often these were things that are clinically at the time as the transplant physician. And I was the director of the bone marrow transplant program at the University of Wisconsin. That I wasn't worried about from a clinical perspective at the time. Now, theoretically, with some of these complications that are prayed over, be a futur risk, absolutely. But that's never how I prayed before. And the Lord really began to lead me into this intimate prayer with him by. Shearing Inga, pray over this. Pray over the lungs, pray over the liver, pray over the kidneys. Not all at once. It was it was a very specific sequence at the time I do remember. And I was even thinking Lord, I'm not worried about the lungs right now. That. Kid just started transplant. I'm worried about X. I started to pray actually about the organs. I was worried about, which at that time was the GI tract because of what was going on with the patient. And the Lord let me in this beautiful dance and conversation with him and I started what I would call, not just prayer, but it was intercession. Intercession is basically the form of prayer where you stand in the gap. On behalf of somebody else. You stand between the person and the Lord and you stand in that gap and intercede on behalf of that person. And that's what I did. And the Lord really showed me things almost that would happen in the future that I did not yet see or was concerned about. And they indeed happened, but I'd already prayed ahead of it and it was marvelous. That whole situation shifted my perception. My relationship with the Lord and really put me into the intimacy of the Lord in the marvelous just relationship. We formed through prayer, which is a two-way conversation. I went from, okay, I'm gonna quickly do my cry time. Then I say a few words to pray to. I sit there with the Lord and enter conversation and I now understood I can actually hear God's voice his. Entering a conversation with me, and it did something in me. It actually changed me. It changed my posture. It changed my posture as a physician. It changed my posture and how I partner with the Lord, with every patient that I touch, and not just seek his help when I'm out of my knowledge box, my toolbox with my medical education. And the long story short is the patient got much sicker before he got better. In fact, he was at end of life. That was in the height of COVID. Nobody was allowed in the hospital. Remember those days? but they're called in family allowed to say their goodbyes. And I still remember to this day when we had that final conversation with the family, basically it's the end of the rope. I don't think anybody believed this patient will pull through. But at the end of that multidisciplinary conversation with the PICU and the parents and all these sub different subspecialties, I got back to the bedside and the oxygen started actually going up and the kid wasn't oxygenating. And it was amazing that the Lord was really starting to work. And I had that inner our confidence that he will be well because I've seen it already. In with my spiritual eyes, the Lord already showed me. It was very surreal and there was this peace and confidence, not by my own strength, but little, knowing from the Lord that this kid will pour through even nothing in the natural and by my medical knowledge would make any sense to point in that direction. The short of it is the patient made it. He got discharged months later and Christmas. Praise the Lord. But this prayer. This experience entering the courts of heaven, being in the presence of the Lord and praying by the power of the Holy Spirit. And not by my own intellect or with my mind, or even with my heart or emotions. I prayed through conversing with the Holy Spirit because remember the Holy Spirit as believers lives in you. And that's how I shifted my perception on prayer and really started to. Become a prayer warrior because I was so excited. I was like, how come I never like. Experience this, what was I doing the last, I don't know almost three decades of my Christian life. I must have been sleeping under the rock and I actually trained with Christian Healing Ministries. That is a ministry that equips prayer ministers and has been around for four decades. The founder of that organization, they're very well known in the healing ministry. Were. In the charismatic renewal movement in the sixties Judith McNat and her husband, Francis McNat, who now passed away a number of years ago, she actually came to my first here, the Healers Physician retreat in 2024 and spoke there and I was wonderful to minister alongside, ginat in the faith and somebody who was a. Huge part of my testimony. That really shifted everything for me. And it shifted from living a parallel life with medicine over here and faith over there to really see this radical shift of bold integration of faith and medicine. And that wasn't a small shift. I went from occasional prayer to having a lifestyle of prayer. Now, am I perfect? I'm praying all the time every day. No but there is a shift in the intention and how I enter that conversation. I shifted from, having to control all the variables and outcome to fully surrendering it to the Lord, including my life. And it shifted from trying to independently do what I do. Until I don't know any further in my medical profession as a pediatric transplant physician to, I'm depending on the Lord. I knew this in my head before. You might say, yeah, daring. Of course you cannot do anything without God. Yes, that is true, and I bet you know that in your head. I knew that in my head too, but did I really believe it? To be honest, no, because if I did, I wouldn't try to control all the variables, I began to seek him more and sit with him and I really just learned to listen to the voice of the Lord. And now I just love love, love equipping others in this way, especially physicians like you. That really changed everything for me. So I hope that this encouraged you. There's more parts to the story. The story goes on that was about let me think. That was in 2021, I think, or 22 when this all happened. I believe 2021. So this is now a five year journey and there is so much that happened since. But I wanted to share this sort of shifting moment where I went from, I try to control everything myself, the best I can to I'm fully surrendering. And. Integration of your faith in medicine starts with surrender. It's not a special strategy. There are not these three points that I can tell you, okay, you've gotta do this. No. It's a posture of your heart to say, Lord, I don't know how this looks like. I don't even know how, if I fully believe in this I've never known another way. Then just, do my best and let God do the rest kind of attitude, which is pretty much how I lifted my physician life. And it's not a bad strategy to fully surrender everything to you. Because I think here's what I wanna point out to you. Sometimes we believe if I just have the right tools, if I try harder, if I do more spiritual kind of things and practices, then things will change. And from my own experience, I can tell you that isn't true Most of the time, I can do, I had seasons of now. Good quiet time. But I still didn't feel the Lord was speaking to me. So having said that, these are core ingredients that are important. You have to spend time with Jesus in his word, right? He's the word that became flesh. So we have to spend time in the Bible, read the scriptures, study it until it transforms us and speaks back to us. But. Things really changed when I surrendered and I felt like the Lord so beautifully pulled me into this, in that situation. I wish I could tell you an easy, or I did these three steps and then the outcome was X. I didn't really, I can tell you that the foundation was there, that I was in a practice of having a quiet time to see Kim. That I was reading my Bible and that I was praying and at least having dedicated time, and probably by that time, a year or two, I have to look back at my journals, but something in that ballpark. I wasn't just doing this for a couple weeks. I had now a solid foundation, but then the Lord just built on it and he almost just pulled me in. It wasn't like I did these three special things and then he's now you qualify. I do believe there was a part where the, where perhaps that's my perception. Okay. But the Lord was like, okay, she's eagerly seeking me. She's holding her place, she's holding weight, and now I'm gonna take that and carry it a step further. So the foundation was there, but there wasn't anything special. That suddenly made me hear the Lord in a new way as I was praying for this little kid. But through this experience, I certainly became more consistent, more relational in my prayer, and very expectant. Wasn't just God, please help me. I was like, now I ask to ask the Lord. I still ask God, please help me, especially when I'm having a hard time. Or when things are difficult with whatever situation I'm facing. Of course there are times when I'm like, God what's going on here? But I'm also more inclined to say, God, what are you doing here? What do you want me to do in this situation? I'm at the end of my rope here. I need your help. What are you saying about this situation that my family. My patience or even, Lord, what's your impression? What? How do you feel about the state of the church right now? These are all questions we can enter with the Lord or just, Lord, help me understand the scripture. This is so odd. I don't really get it. So being focused on conversation with the Lord in prayer rather than a transactional relationship. It's all about relationship versus transaction or information when we pray and just as a side note, while this all was happening with my patient on a parallel track, but in a good way, I experienced some of my own healing and freedom from. All sorts of things that I didn't even realize I had stored up in me. Whether it's was emotional or spiritual healing, some physical healing or the Lord really walked with me at the very same time. So I was receiving healing and prayer as I was extending and contending and interceding for my patient and his healing through prayer. It is a beautiful thing, how that was woven together. Only God can do that. The other thing that I learn from this, you have to receive your own healing and you have to contend for your own healing to some degree in order to contend for others. There is a part. It's not like you have to completely perfect. That's not what I'm saying, but I think there's a part when you walked out an area of your life in freedom with the Lord and you receive healing or deliverance or emotional healing or you overcome something. That you walk in greater authority to help others with that. That's not an intellectual thing. I think that has to do with spiritual authority. That also has to do with experience because now I can tell people, I've been where you have been. I have struggled. I have been in difficult academic environments or I have faced difficult situations with patients, and here's what the Lord did. And then remember, please that this is a process. This is not a one in a moment kind of thing. While there seems to be punctuated times in our journey with the Lord, where God really puts an explanation mark somewhere, or a period with a encounter or an experience, it is really a process we are living through. That means it's an ongoing journey and it's not this one time thing that will happen or that you have to go to this I don't know, conference or meet this special person in order to have everything changed. Now that can be very powerful and God is working in that way, and I have more stories there can tell you about that. But it works together. There's a journey. And there might be punctuated exciting moments where you encounter the Lord. And last say, I just wanna encourage you. Walking out your faith in the medical field is a journey. It's not about perfection. You don't have to figure it all out on your own. You don't have to be perfect, but you have to be willing to surrender to the Lord and just take the next. Step and sometimes these are very tiny steps of obedience. Like me sitting on my porch in my quiet time, praying for that baby. That changed everything. And I could have said, I prayed for him yesterday. Why do you need me to pray for him again? Lord, it seems ridiculous. And this went on for many weeks. I don't exactly remember how many, but it was a long time that I prayed for that kid. And I could have just thought, okay, I'm switching my prayer list here for a while, but the Lord just kept me going at it, and that was good. In closing, I just wanna say invite you to reflect for the Lord and maybe pray afterwards. If you're in a car, just talk out loud and speak to the Lord and say, and ask him. Where are you inviting me to deeper parts with you? Where am I maybe holding back? Are there still things in my life, any areas of life that I'm just trying to hold onto tight to control everything? Because here's the thing, often the invitation to us isn't doing more to add another thing to our to-do list. But to surrender things to the Lord. So if this encouraged you that's wonderful. And I really pray that the Lord is speaking to you in your life. And actually let me pray for that right now. Lord, thank you so much for all the voices listening right now. Every person on the other end of this podcast, Lord, that you were blessed and. That you speak into areas of their life where you wanna just touch them and where you invite them to another step of surrender so they can actually live life to the fullest and more fully, it seems like perhaps impossible right now because your plate is full. Your you are so drowning at things and giving something up seems like this is gonna be the last straw, and you are really gonna be just under the border and cannot hold yourself up. But what if the Lord is exactly asking you to do this? Because he's extending his hand and say, I got you. But if you're holding onto all these things, you don't have a hand left to reach out to mine. That's really something, an image that just came to my mind as I'm praying. So I pray that over you, that you will find the strength and the courage that Lord gives you the courage to surrender and to reach out to his hand versus holding onto your own step. And thank you Jesus, for equipping those physicians and healthcare workers to be mighty men and women of God, to really bring transformation in the love of Jesus and to every encounter with every patient, every colleague. And we just be humble and meek in our walk and love towards you and people. Thank you Lord. Amen. All right, so if that resonated with you, please. Do three things for me. Number one, share and subscribe to the podcast and review it. That would be great if you can leave a rating or review and share it with others. Number two, if you want to join a deeper conversation on these topics, join my free Facebook groups called Heal the Healers, kingdom Community for Christian Physicians. I put the link in the show notes number three. I keep on mentioning it. There's a big conference coming up this fall, October 30 and 31st in Boston, Massachusetts. It's called the Conference and you are invited. Please get on the wait list so that you will be the first to notify when I actually open the doors before I open them to the public. There will be a few perks for those people that are already on the wait list that you get access to, specials before they go to anybody else. Just as a thank you for being in this community and supporting this podcast, I really appreciate it. Thank you so much and God bless you.