Week 8

Love Ethics – week 8

The Problem with the Love Bank

(Need to Review love bank in order to understand the problem and the solution more fully.)

Review:

The Love Bank works in a present love feeling economy or “feelings-as-currency” exchange.

• This works on a daily basis.
  • Some days you just wake up feeling blue. You don’t have a lot of energy to get things done!

So, why do you feel the way you do today?

Must be counter balanced by the positives:

• I’m loved
• I have impacted another person
• Stimulation is fuel
• Good food can be a fuel.

If you get negative love feelings, you pull out of your emotional reserves, and then feel better.

Then you are juiced up and ready to go.

On the other hand, if you have negative love feelings and go to the bank and have no reserves – You are in big trouble! You don’t go back running and all charged up.

• Example of Paul: Acts 14:19-20

Peter as example:

John 21: Jesus and the Miraculous Catch of Fish

1Afterward Jesus appeared again to his disciples, by the Sea of Tiberias. It happened this way: 2Simon Peter, Thomas (called Didymus), Nathanael from Cana in Galilee, the sons of Zebedee, and two other disciples were together. 3″I’m going out to fish,” Simon Peter told them, and they said, “We’ll go with you.” So they went out and got into the boat, but that night they caught nothing.

4Early in the morning, Jesus stood on the shore, but the disciples did not realize that it was Jesus.

5He called out to them, “Friends, haven’t you any fish?” “No,” they answered.

6He said, “Throw your net on the right side of the boat and you will find some.” When they did, they were unable to haul the net in because of the large number of fish.

7Then the disciple whom Jesus loved said to Peter, “It is the Lord!” As soon as Simon Peter heard him say, “It is the Lord,” he wrapped his outer garment around him (for he had taken it off) and jumped into the water. 8The other disciples followed in the boat, towing the net full of fish, for they were not far from shore, about a hundred yards. 9When they landed, they saw a fire of burning coals there with fish on it, and some bread.

10Jesus said to them, “Bring some of the fish you have just caught.”

11Simon Peter climbed aboard and dragged the net ashore. It was full of large fish, 153, but even with so many the net was not torn. 12Jesus said to them, “Come and have breakfast.” None of the disciples dared ask him, “Who are you?” They knew it was the Lord. 13Jesus came, took the bread and gave it to them, and did the same with the fish. 14This was now the third time Jesus appeared to his disciples after he was raised from the dead.

Observations:

• Peter is charged up and runs to Christ.
• Peter is miserable, recall he just betrayed Christ and Christ cooked them some breakfast. Jesus has built some present love feelings into Peter – but there is something wrong with Peter values – Jesus goes to work now and starts the Permanent Love Value construction zone!
• Let’s continue on in the passage:

15When they had finished eating, Jesus said to Simon Peter, “Simon son of John, do you truly love me more than these?”
“Yes, Lord,” he said, “you know that I love you.”
Jesus said, “Feed my lambs.”

16Again Jesus said, “Simon son of John, do you truly love me?”
He answered, “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.”
Jesus said, “Take care of my sheep.”

17 The third time he said to him, “Simon son of John, do you love me?”
Peter was hurt because Jesus asked him the third time, “Do you love me?” He said, “Lord, you know all things; you know that I love you.” Jesus said, “Feed my sheep. 18 I tell you the truth, when you were younger you dressed yourself and went where you wanted; but when you are old you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will dress you and lead you where you do not want to go.” 19Jesus said this to indicate the kind of death by which Peter would glorify God. Then he said to him, “Follow me!”

Breakdown of Passage:

verse 15: Jesus to Peter- agapao; Peter in response to Jesus: phileo

verse 16: Jesus to Peter- agapao; Peter in response to Jesus: phileo

verse 17: Jesus to Peter: phileo; Peter in response to Jesus; phileo

Peter had the poor permanent love value of arrogance – he thought higher of himself than he actually loved Jesus – Jesus got Peter to see that he only loved Jesus – phileo and not agapao. Jesus makes Peter realize that he that you are not the MAN that you thought you were – you know that you are a total loser – this was a poison in Peter and Jesus went after that in Peter.

Verse 18-19: However, Jesus indicated that Peter’s phileo would mature to agapao by predicting Peter’s end as a martyr.

Like Peter we must change the Love Bank.

Recall that the love bank is Permanent Love Values

• PLV are the love values that provide the framework to nurture your love.
• PLV are fences for the heart – this has been being build your whole life – (the kid safe in the yard)
• The love bank is contained within a set of values.
  • These values are known as Permanent Love Values.
  • They remain – these values are structures, you know how to store up feelings – because of your values. They provide protection.

Huge Implications:

1. Permanent love values provides: a sense of security – (if they are the right ones)

• Anxiety occurs when the fences of the heart are broken or flimsy.
• People who don’t have good PLV feel unsafe and frightened – they must get their fences. mended – replace poor values with good ones.

2. Permanent love values build significance.

• Taking feelings and investing them wisely builds significance.
• Poor PLV, take love feelings and invest them poorly.
  • Example: Like girls who keep going for the bad guy.
    • These are poor PLV.

• Parents:
  • you need to build into your kids – correct PLV – so they they know how to make their feelings work in the real world.
• Discipleship:
  • Do not just provide PLF- must provide healthy PLV by uncovering and fixing the the faulty ones
  • People do not grow if all your are doing is providing stimulation – (ie PLF)
  • We want to be nice – we do not want to go in and do the construction.
    • Why? It is messy.

Remember – Present Love Feelings must be present in all love relationships.

• Men: You are more than check – bring home the love feelings – relate!

• Discipleship: cannot be just academic there must be warmth and friendship – relational interactions must occur.

Depression occurs when:

• PLF are depleted.
• You do not have energy.
• You do not feel loved!

Parents must provide PLF in order to:

• Give the kids fuel – PLF
• In order to receive discipline – PLV

Discipleship:

• Do not let you cell become a dead zone – void of PLF.
• Ex: Phlegmatic cells (particularly men) – suck out the life

Everyone needs to recognize when your PLF are running low!

• One of the basic principles of having a good functioning love bank is that you know when your reserves are running low.

• Good bank: sees currency is getting low.
• Bad bank: bushwhacked and surprised that the vault is empty!
  • One day good we are running great – the next day running flat. HUH?
  • What happened is that you did a terrible job of recognizing that your reserves were running low and you did not do anything about it.
• You need to see that your reserves are running low.

The Problem:

Our heart lies hidden or surrounded by layers and layers of Permanent Love Values.

The Crust that surrounds our heart is being refined.

Previously it was called pride – now PLV.

• These are synonymous terms – biblically speaking:

In your heart, if you are tired or feeling low – you are always running out of PLF, energy.

• This proves the validity/strength of your PLV.
• If you have poor Permanent Love Values – you are always running out of Present Love Feelings.

Your heart (control center) is always contending with your Permanent Love Values.

• Your heart is always choosing how to handle the exchange commodity.
• In the moment of a crisis, your heart decides to slop up some barrier – our poor solution,which in turn, now becomes a Permanent Love Value.
• Your heart is choosing/rebuilding/repairing where these walls are breaking down.

GOD’S LOVE BANK:

When God builds a love bank – God builds a one that works as advertised.

You get these love feelings – PLF. The building and protecting –

God’s PLV/ Love Bank consists of:

• God teaches you how to build wise gates and fences.
  • Gates are how you go out into the world.
  • There are wise gates and foolish gates.
  • Gates are how you go out into the street or into the bad, dangerous, exciting world.
• moral fiber
• knowledge of the truth
• Mature responses:
  • Know people – know the mind of God
• Stable lifestyle
• See and learn how to sacrifice – you see sacrifice, then learn to do it!
• You know how to get nourished/strengthened
• You understand discipline
• You know gratitude

You know how to give and to get a good return on your investment.

It can either be a legalistic set of rules, or as the way to protect your heart and to build significance.

Too bad, you don’t have God building your love bank!

Who built your love bank?

The PLV Construction Crew:

• Parents
• Siblings: pounded in other PLV

Friends/School: always teaches you to handle people with love

• MTV
• Me: I invented some things
• Body of Christ
• God: things did change, he is in the mix

WHAT WE HAVE HERE IS A MESS!

This bank is unwise – This is your messed up love bank.

This is what it is composed of:

• You are unwise and don’t know how to protect your heart; you are dumb about opening up your heart.
• Immoral fiber
• Common wisdom of the world
• Immature responses
• Unstable lifestyle
• Seeing and learning how to take
• Apathetic concern for me instead of nourishment

Yelling – not redemptive discipline

• Ingratitude

Broken or Weak Fences

Destructive “holes” in our emotional lives build up:

• Unfiltered needs “leak out.”
• Painful reactions pierce the heart – because my love bank is so broken down.

I have a legitimate need, “I need to be loved.”

• The responses that I get back from people hurt because my fences/love bank are broken down.
• Disappointment comes back from this gaping hole. “I never got nourished – fed me!”

I say, “Love me.” I have needs.

• And People say, “Hell NO! Go love yourself!’
• This hurts! That rejection came zinging right in through a broken part of your fence and that hurts.

So then you get into an argument:

• You came back saying, “Please love me!”

And they say, “NO!”

That is what an argument looks like:

• Two people demanding that someone meets their need to be loved.
• Who will cave in?

From inside your own heart, you do not understand what the problem is that people have with you.

From your point of view, you see your legit needs and ask to be treated well, and then you get the “NO WAY” thing.

You ponder: “What is wrong with these people that they are NOT loving me the way I need to be loved?”

The real picture looks more like this:

Legitimate needs gets filtered by your broken down – sick-o-wall of pride. You are demanding that people nourish and feed you – right now on your terms – “WAHHHHH!”

Still don’t get it?

In the real world, people see the pride and the broken permanent love bank values transformed from legitimate needs into some sick distorted demand – that is the power of the old nature – that old sick, depraved man. We must work on that (distorted PLV’s) when we go out and love people!

Observe this scenario:

This is why your love relationships don’t work. This is why you are not victorious in loving people!

1. You come out with your love feelings – you demand fed me!
2. You know people will say “NO” to your needs.

1. But now that you are “wiser,” you don’t care if they say “NO” because you now have other weirdo strategies in your arsenal to deal with people like, “I am a tough guy.”
2. You have all these strategies all strewn together haphazardly, and they do not work that well.

It is through these leaks – these strategies for handling not getting our love feelings (PLF) – that our love feelings are depleted – also significance leaks away.

1. So, we come out with even larger demands.
2. This is our deceived minds at work.
3. We think the problem and the solution are out there.
4. The problem is: I need more love. “Why don’t you love me?”
5. People say, “I keep giving you the PLF.” You don’t appreciate all the freaking love I am giving!
6. The problem is that your Love Bank is all messed up, and it cannot hold the PLF in, so now you keep eating up those around you to feel better.
7. You must know what to do with the PLF’s you get!
8. Proud outer man must be redefined. You must align your PLV’s with God’s.

Pillars of Pride:

Our Permanent Love Values are glued together by the formidable PRIDE BARRIER

Lies	Scars	Ingratitude	Strategies
It’s about ME!	Cherished pains	“I deserve better…”	Infantile
I don’t need God	Bitterness	“You owe…”	Work Sub
“I’m right!”			Work for love

These filthy things are tightly glued together by the strength that pulls us towards depravity – that glue is pride!

• This is complex – it is not just one poor PLV. There are many poor PLV’s.
• Permanent Love Values are intertwined.
• Everyone has values that are interconnected
• This is where ministry comes in.

The work of ministry:

The purpose of our lives with one another is to go and do like JC did with Peter.

Surgically remove those things that are intertwined/glued together and replace them with God’s values.

There are two ways to go about this:

1. “Chipping away” - because you are poking around because you are uncertain to how the sin life is working. The sin life is unique to each person.

1. Then, the “Blasting through” – you see it! When Katey called on Keith to produce the document that proved he had this right! He WAS stunned that he needed to verify the right to his demands.

2Corinthians 4:6-7

6 For God, who said, “Light shall shine out of darkness,” is the One who has shone in our hearts to give the Light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.
7 But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, so that the surpassing greatness of the power will be of God and not from ourselves;

If you are loving each other biblically – then have your eyes set on their PLV.

IF your eye is set on making them feel better – then. it is not set on PLV – there will be no growth/transformation of character!

The implications are this:

• We need to go beyond PLF in our relationships, and minister to the “pillars of pride” blocking real maturity.
• Ministering to the “pillars of pride” requires real discernment and repeated efforts.
  • It is complicated and you must move in with perseverance and you need to identify if you are just trying to make them feel better or if you are seeing their faulty PLV’s a
• Go back to earlier relationships (parents) to get those weak fences repaired.
  • If you can love your parent victoriously, your wack-o strategies will fall away.
• If your emotional needs aren’t getting met, look at the way you are trying to do it!
  • Don’t think you are the cursed one on the earth.
  • It is not working because how you are handling love.
  • Or you are just functioning through life and never went looking for love

We will begin to look in these things in more depth in the following weeks.

Assignment:

Identify a false Permanent Love Value you have.

What strategies do you use to get your love bank filled?

Determine if this is a godly or ungodly strategy.