I want to highlight all of the times the Heidelberg Catechism mentions the idea of thanksgiving. If you’ve never considered how often the Catechism mentions thankfulness, perhaps take the time to meditate on this excellent and historic pedagogue of the reformed faith as you approach the Thanksgiving holiday…thanksgiving is built into the structure of the catechism (guilt, grace, gratitude).

Thanksgiving is an expression of appreciation or gratitude for a gift received. Thanksgiving always entails two parties. In giving thanks to God, he is the superior party (since he is the creator), and we are the inferior party (since we are creatures). Everything we have and are comes from him. He is the consummate giver (James 1:17). The Bible bids us to express our gratitude to him in worship (e.g. Psalm 107:1). Our vocalized thanksgiving is to be the authentic overflow of our hearts for God’s goodness to us.
In this post, I want to highlight all of the times the Heidelberg Catechism mentions the idea of thanksgiving. If you’ve never considered how often the Catechism mentions thankfulness, perhaps take the time to meditate on this excellent and historic pedagogue of the reformed faith as you approach the Thanksgiving holiday.
First, thanksgiving is built into the structure of the catechism (guilt, grace, gratitude):
Q 2. What do you need to know in order to live and die in the joy of this comfort [of belonging to Christ]?
A. First, how great my sins and misery are; second, how I am delivered from all my sins and misery; third, how I am to be thankfulto God for such deliverance.
Second, thankfulness is connected to the doctrine of God’s providence:
Q 28. What does it benefit us to know that God has created all things and still upholds them by His providence?
A. We can be patient in adversity, thankfulin prosperity, and with a view to the future we can have a firm confidence in our faithful God and Father that no creature shall separate us from His love; for all creatures are so completely in His hand that without His will they cannot so much as move.
Third, thankfulness is the fruit of union with Christ:
Q 32. Why are you called a Christian?
A. Because I am a member of Christ by faith and thus share in His anointing, so that I may as prophet confess His Name, as priest present myself a living sacrifice of thankfulnessto Him, and as king fight with a free and good conscience against sin and the devil in this life, and hereafter reign with Him eternally over all creatures.
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Preachers are not puppets on a stage; nor are they blocks of wood. They are men of God who are to zealously preach the word in season and out, fanning into flame the gift of God which is in them, bringing God’s word to bear over the people called by his own name. There’s nothing boring about that!

In his book The Work of the Pastor, the late William Still wrote that one of the devil’s “most cunning tricks [is] to cause the Word of God to be dispensed by lazy, sleepy, moribund creatures, who find preaching to be the most burdensome part of their work and cannot help showing it.” If not for the fact that we have experienced exactly what Mr. Still is talking about, we might have thought he was being harsh. The reality is that we have heard boring and unaffected men preaching the most affecting truth in the world. And that is a big problem.
Shouldn’t the living Word of God be preached with focused energy and heat? Mr. Still was warning pastors that the way they preach is an important factor in communicating what they are preaching. The medium impacts the message.
It must be stated, of course, that no man should preach with a false sense of earnestness, for that would be an acted lie. Nor should the energy of the preacher be like a relentless, raging river in both pitch and tempo. But for the sake of the glorious doctrine being preached, how can it be dull? For the sake of the awesome God we serve, ought the word boring be in the repertoire of adjectives used to describe preaching?
If you are a reformed Christian, you know that God wants his people taught by lively preaching.
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