Sunday: Discerning My Season | Pastor Sam Han | Grace Church Fullerton

Summary

Pastor Sam Han’s sermon, “Discerning Your Time,” centers on Ecclesiastes 7:14: people should respond joyfully to prosperous days and thoughtfully to days of adversity, recognizing that both kinds of seasons fall within God’s sovereignty.

Main Ideas

• Recognize the season you are in. Drawing on Acts 17, Han says God determines people’s times and circumstances so they may seek and find Him. Life circumstances—including family background, social position, and the era in which someone lives—are part of that setting, not reasons to spend life wishing to be someone else.
• Do not assume a season’s meaning too quickly. Han tells a “we’ll see” story about a farmer whose apparently good and bad events repeatedly change in significance. People do not control every outcome and may not immediately know whether an event will prove beneficial or difficult.
• Do not become stuck in a past season. Han compares Israel’s move from slavery toward becoming a people able to overcome challenges with the need to respond to new stages of life and ministry, rather than relying automatically on old habits or assumptions.
• Seek God in every season. The sermon’s central calling is the same in prosperity and adversity: seek God joyfully and trust Him rather than letting circumstances—or comparisons with others—define one’s sense of worth and success.

What Prosperity Is For

Han teaches that wealth and other forms of well-being are gifts from God, not grounds for pride or proof of personal superiority. He encourages people to enjoy what they have with gratitude while remembering that their abilities and opportunities come from God.

He also warns that comparing oneself with wealthier people can obscure the blessings already present, such as food, friendship, family, health, shelter, and community.

Han gives three purposes for prosperity:

1. Care for people in need.

   • Give practical help to poor neighbors and community members, including support for necessities such as food and bills.
   • Include people who are physically weak or unable to contribute in ordinary ways.
   • Support what Han calls the “holy poor”—pastors, missionaries, and others who have given up earning opportunities to serve.
   • Give generously rather than assuming poverty is always the result of bad choices. Han also advises giving privately rather than seeking recognition.

2. Care for the church.

   • Han connects tithes and offerings with supporting the church and its work, rather than treating giving as a merely abstract religious rule.
   • He urges congregants to view the church as their shared home: contribute resources, take responsibility for its upkeep, and look for ways to improve its facilities and capacity to serve.
   • His appeal is for members to participate rather than merely complain about what the church lacks.

3. Build relationships that create opportunities to share the Gospel.

   • Han suggests using generosity—such as buying a meal or coffee for a non-Christian friend—to show care and create opportunities to invite that person to church and speak about faith.
   • The goal is not to advertise one’s own goodness but to help others encounter Christ.

How to Understand Adversity

Han says a difficult season is not automatically evidence of a satanic attack, personal failure, or inadequate religious giving. He describes two possible purposes:

• To humble people whose prosperity has led to pride or self-reliance. James 4 warns against making plans as though the future and success were entirely under one’s control. Han encourages people to ask what God wants them to do today and to keep serving, including through ordinary or menial tasks, rather than treating wealth as a reason to avoid service.
• To teach contentment and joy independent of circumstances. Using Paul’s words in Philippians, Han says adversity can teach people to remain grounded whether they have plenty or little. Trials can refine faith and develop perseverance rather than being understood only as punishment.

The sermon closes by encouraging people to fight for healing and address burdens where possible, while not allowing hardship to erase gratitude or trust in God.

Speakers and Sources Featured

• Pastor Sam Han — the sermon’s speaker.
• The Bible — passages cited or paraphrased include Ecclesiastes 7:14; Acts 17:26–27; Deuteronomy 8:17–18 and 15:6–11; 1 Samuel 2:7; Proverbs 10:22; Ecclesiastes 5:19; Malachi 3:6–12; Haggai 1:2–11; Luke 16:9; James 4:13–17 and 1:2–4; and Philippians 4:11–13.
• An unnamed real-estate agent — referenced through a testimony about becoming wealthy, growing proud, and later losing much of his wealth.
• Kim Mi-jin — identified by Han as a financial manager whose book discusses “the holy poor.”
• An unnamed farmer and neighbor — characters in the illustrative “we’ll see” story; they are not presented as actual speakers in the sermon.