When you come to perceive the love God has for you, it generates love in you for others. John wrote succinctly that our love of God comes because of our awareness of his love for us: “We love him, because he first loved us.” (1 John 4:19) It is this love that causes us to increase in our love for others:
9 In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him.
10 Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
11 Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another. (1 John 4)
Like love, faith is contagious. The more faith you exercise, the easier you will make it for others to do the same.
You can help give other people desire by helping them imagine outcomes that never before would have crossed their minds.
You can help other people reason through situations beyond their possession of wisdom.
You can help other people act in ways they didn’t think possible.
You can help other people identify outcomes that they obtained through faith beyond what they would have otherwise recognized.
None of these things need take a lifetime of work to accomplish, though you would be hard-pressed to spend your life in a better way. It is amazing to see just how great of changes you can help bring to pass in the lives of others by taking advantage of passing opportunities for a kind word, a helpful suggestion, or sharing enabling resources.
People need your example in order to know what improvement is possible in life, and, through your example, to have a reason to believe it is possible. Through your faith, you can “lift up the hands which hang down, and the feeble knees.” (Hebrews 12:12)
The people within your reach need you to “teach them to never be weary of good works, but to be meek and lowly in heart....” (Alma 37:34)
Help other people see things as they are really are, then help them see how they could be. This will not be pleasant to any but the meekest of individuals, but it will yield joy for all who listen:
Now no chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous: nevertheless afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby. (Hebrews 12:11)
For every person you encounter, ask yourself, “what is the best possible outcome for this person? If they were to build the most abundant life they could enjoy, what would it look like?” Then ask yourself, “given where they are now, what is the smallest possible step they could take towards that outcome?” Then ask yourself, “what can I do to make it easier for them to take that step?” If you incessantly repeat this process with everyone you meet, you will quickly affect a staggering difference in this world.
Teach other people to deserve your efforts. Teach them that they will reap what they sow, that your time is precious, and that your resources are limited. As you exercise more and more faith, you will possess greater shares of the love of God within you. You will happily give everything you are, have, could be, or could have for the benefit of any soul, but that doesn’t entitle anyone to what you have to share so long as there exist people who will make better use of it. You are obligated to do the best you can with what you have, and that requires you to prioritize those who will do the most with what you give them.
The greatest joy in life can be found in helping someone feel more of the love of God—which exceeds all other good things on earth. Once you taste this joy, nothing else on earth can compare. Alma described this as “exceedingly great joy”:
25 Yea, and now behold, O my son, the Lord doth give me exceedingly great joy in the fruit of my labors;
26 For because of the word which he has imparted unto me, behold, many have been born of God, and have tasted as I have tasted, and have seen eye to eye as I have seen; therefore they do know of these things of which I have spoken, as I do know; and the knowledge which I have is of God. (Alma 36)
While some accounts illustrate the kind of sudden awareness God can give us of his love, his love is far greater than what can be revealed all at once. A one-time revelation of his love can be jarring enough to empower great sacrifice on our part for the welfare of others, but the faithful disciple will be showered with constant, progressing understanding of God’s love for us.
As we travel the path of faith, we will accrue additional evidence of God’s love for us that gives us the strength to push beyond previous limits, and to truly bear, believe, hope, and endure all things, particularly in our pursuit of helping others to feel the same.