The daily pastoral battle: "...we work with you for your joy"

What's our motivation in pastoral ministry? 
The Apostle Paul's relationship with the Corinthian church was often emotionally strained. In (what we now have as) 2 Corinthians, we learn that his last visit with them had been a painful experience for both parties, requiring confrontation over sin and leading to open bitterness. Paul suffered personal humiliation. Any lesser missionary might easily have committed this church to the Lord in prayer, washed his hands off them and walked away – and few would have been surprised.  

But Paul hung in there. Gently pushing back against their false accusations of not caring for them and only pleasing himself, Paul affirms his persevering love for the Corinthians and of his driving motivation for these difficult believers: “…but we work with you for your joy” 2 Cor 1:24. 
In all that he did, even at times when heartbreak and sorrow resulted, Paul wanted these Christians to experience more fully their ‘joy in Jesus’. Whether they recognised that themselves or not, Paul knew it was what they needed. Today, now, it’s what we need as well.

Pastor and author Sam Storms explains what Paul meant when he wrote about this ‘joy’.

“The joy for which Paul laboured and prayed and preached should never be thought of in terms of ‘feeling good about yourself’ or living in luxury… The joy Paul has in mind is a deep, durable delight in the splendour of God that utterly ruins you for anything else. It is a whole-souled savouring of the spiritual sweetness of Jesus that drives out all competing pleasures and leads the soul to rest content with the knowledge of God and the blessings of intimacy with him. This is the kind of joy that, rather than being dependent on material and physical comfort, actually frees you from bondage to it and liberates you from sinful reliance on worldly conveniences and gadgets and gold.
"Paul [knew] that Satan was no less committed to their joy in the passing pleasures of sin. He knew all too well that the diabolical strategy of the enemy is to seduce us into believing that the world and the flesh and sinful self-indulgence can do for our weary and broken hearts what God can’t (or won’t).
"This is the battle we face each day. We awaken to a world at war for the allegiance of our minds and the affections of our souls. The winner will be whoever can persuade us that he will bring the greatest and most satisfying joy. That is why Paul laboured and prayed so passionately and sacrificially for joy in Jesus in the hearts of that first-century church.” 

Sam Storms: A Pure and Sincere Devotion to Christ, Vol.1. (Crossway), p.57-8.