The love of God need not be sentimental. For those not sentimentally inclined, the notion of loving God is firstly inaccessible and secondly unactionable: one cannot will an emotion.
What I can do is organise my life and my day around serving God and attend diligently to plenty of prayers.
These prayers are not be judged by whether I find them interesting, enlightening, relieving, or uplifting. They're often not. They're judged only by their doing. A good prayer is one that is said.
Constant prayer automatically and usually fairly swiftly results in a radically altered day.
Add those up and you have a radically altered life.
Today, I don't need drink, drugs, acting out, or anything else to dull or alter my perception and interpretation of reality.
Everything starts with me and my attitude.
I do not need to cut or modify the link between cause (mentality) and effect (my life and experience of it).
If I do not like my life or my experience of it and desire change, it is always my attitude that needs changing first.
I've never met anyone (including myself!) with a problematic life that did not have a problematic attitude.
Head on straight, first, then everything else flows automatically.
***
If I am feeling battered, it is because I'm deliberately trying to handle something on my own rather than from the 'secret place' of being within God.
Disturbance of any sort is a lack of 'right relation'.
God's will for me is only ever what is possible.
That means that God's will for me is simply the list of things for me to do today, things I can do, or they would not be on the list, to the level I'm currently capable of doing them.
Anything beyond my tasks is none of my business.
I address intrusive thoughts with that: I say to them: That's none of my business.
***
When I am upset or think I have a 'problem', I'm NUTS: not using the Steps.
Today, I don't have problems. I have solutions. Problems with no 'solutions' are really facts, not problems, and I can withdraw my assessment of them as 'problems' by applying the solution of acceptance.
If I'm thinking about 'them', I can pull myself up short and refocus back on the task at hand.
If I'm worried, I am calculating without God.
With God, any situation can be dealt with practically and withstood.
There is no justification for fear under any circumstances. Prudence, yes; fear, no.