When trials come, how can I know whether God is calling me to patiently endure, or whether he wants me to repent of a specific sin? When do I know if God is correcting me? It’s a question every believer faces eventually, and today it comes from a female listener named Hunter. This is so good. “Pastor John, thank you for your honest answer about the pandemic this year. I’m thinking especially of your special episode ‘How Do We Make Sense of the Coronavirus?’ There you concluded that some instances of suffering, including weakness, illness, and death, represent direct judgments of God for our sin intended to discipline us and bring us to repentance and restoration. I see this in passages like 1 Corinthians 11:30 30 For this cause many among you are weak and sickly, and not a few sleep. –32. Yet we also know from Scripture that God allows some suffering not as a specific judgement or correction, but simply to display his glory and build in us patient endurance. I see this in passages like John 9:3 3 Jesus answered, Neither did this man sin, nor his parents: but that the works of God should be made manifest in him. and 2 Corinthians 12:8 8 Concerning this thing I besought the Lord thrice, that it might depart from me. –9. So my question is this: When God brings suffering into our lives, how can we discern if that suffering should be met with patience and endurance, or with immediate life evaluation and alteration?” Read or listen to this interview at our website: https://www.desiringgod.org/interviews/is-my-suffering-a-correction-for-sin Find other recent and popular Ask Pastor John episodes: https://www.desiringgod.org/ask-pastor-john