God wants you to be joyful. In fact, He wants you to experience the most maximum fullness of joy that is available on earth. John the Apostle, as he was approaching 90 years old, after he had watched all his closest friends be martyred, who also spent decades fleeing Christian persecution, wrote a letter on how to have a full and complete joy. We call that letter 1 John. John wrote this letter so that we would know how to make our joy complete (1 John 1:4). John's letter is simply his life testimony of how he applied the personal, face to face teachings of Jesus to all of life. Jesus told all the disciples repeatedly, as they lived life together for three years, that He came for us to have a fullness of joy in every moment of our lives, including old age, persecution and eminent martyrdom (John 3:29, 15:11, 16:24, 17:13).
