When my younger brother Richard was three years old he learned how to manipulate my mother. Whenever she refused to give him what he wanted he would break into tears and say "Mommy you don't love me". His heartfelt conviction was that true love is best recognized when the powers that be him gave him those things he desired for his own happiness. After some time my mother overcame her natural tenderness of heart and stopped giving in to him. But for a while everything was going his way. Sometime we judge God with the same scale. When life is going well we take for granted that He loves us but when trials and setbacks come we begin to ask the question "does He really love me?" 

If God's love can not be seen in the everyday events of life what reason do we have to believe that He loves us at all? The key to understanding that question is to recognize that from God's perspective there is something more important to our welfare than our day to day happiness. John 3:16 says "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believes on him shall not perish but have everlasting life." God's assessment of our condition is that our greatest need is to have someone rescue us from something far worse than unhappiness in this world. That something is an unhappiness in the world to come that is eternal and infinitely more painful than anything we will ever experience here. His love is best seen in the offering up of His Son to die a painful, shameful death as a substitute in the place of sinners, people like you and me who have rebelled against His laws and standards. Each person who sees their need for His saving, rescuing work, and turns from their rebellion to put their trust in Him receives a happiness that is infinitely superior to anything on this earth. He gives not just a pardon for sin but full forgiveness, new life, and the certainty of enjoying Him forever. When this begins to take hold in a person's life the storms and trials of today somehow seem much more bearable.