The Discipline Of Watching: Reclaiming A Necessary Outlook And Exercise For The Purity And Perseverance Of The Saints

Lawrence Bowlin

Etd

The Discipline Of Watching: Reclaiming A Necessary Outlook And Exercise For The Purity And Perseverance Of The Saints

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MLA citation style (9th ed.)

Lawrence Bowlin. The Discipline Of Watching: Reclaiming A Necessary Outlook And Exercise For The Purity And Perseverance Of The Saints. rim.ir.atla.com/concern/etds/db946db9-1e6e-4099-b455-887d02ce48b4.

APA citation style (7th ed.)

L. Bowlin. The Discipline Of Watching: Reclaiming A Necessary Outlook And Exercise For The Purity And Perseverance Of The Saints. https://rim.ir.atla.com/concern/etds/db946db9-1e6e-4099-b455-887d02ce48b4

Chicago citation style (CMOS 17, author-date)

Lawrence Bowlin. The Discipline Of Watching: Reclaiming A Necessary Outlook And Exercise For The Purity And Perseverance Of The Saints. https://rim.ir.atla.com/concern/etds/db946db9-1e6e-4099-b455-887d02ce48b4.

Note: These citations are programmatically generated and may be incomplete.

Creator

Lawrence Bowlin

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In Copyright

Abstract

The paper begins with an extensive survey of the Biblical call to watchfulness in the Old and New Testaments showing not only that it is a recurring theme in Scripture but that it is a foundational theme in the context of spiritual warfare from Genesis chapter three through Revelation chapter twenty, for as long as God’s people live in a fallen world. This theme is also plainly manifested throughout Church history and particularly so in the writings of the English Puritans. One would be hard pressed to find a single Puritan author who did not address this topic and that repeatedly as a matter of life or death in terms of one’s spirituality and the healthiness of a church overall. This project highlights some of the more prominent Puritan authors in how they exhorted their people to watch over their own hearts, to watch over their brothers in love, and to humbly receive the watchful care of their church elders. The call to watchfulness is then evaluated today in light of contemporary spiritual renewal movements and the reclamation of the spiritual disciplines, in the context of Christian counseling, and in church growth literature, all of which touch on this theme of watchfulness and seem to be moving in a direction of greater accountability in the normal Christian life. This project attempts to integrate the findings from these Scriptural, theological historical, and contemporary elements into a new model of ministry designed to equip the members of a church with the necessary tools to watch over their brothers’ hearts in addition to their own and to humbly receive the watchful care and correction of Christ’s undershepherds. These tools are in the form of sermons, scripts, and seminars.

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