Maintaining joy in God takes 'work'; that is, it's a fight against every impulse for alien joys and every obstacle in the way to seeing and savoring Christ.
John PiperWe will not let you choose between being a lover of God and his sovereignty and being a lover of lost people.
John PiperO, God of wonder, enlarge my capacity to be amazed at what is amazing, and end my attraction to the insignificant.
John PiperNot to abide in Jesus’ love would mean that we stop believing that we are loved by Jesus. We look at our circumstances - perhaps persecution or disease or abandonment - and we conclude that we are not loved by Jesus anymore. That’s the opposite of abiding in the love of Jesus. So abiding in his love means continuing to believe, moment by moment, that we are loved.
John Piper