Your Form 1040 Prayer Guide

If you haven’t already filed your income tax return for 2007, you’ll be working on it over the weekend.  For many of us a Form 1040 represents nothing particularly happy – the time it takes to complete it and then the sense that all that money could be going to a better cause.  But this year, I’m challenging you to use your form 1040 and its attachments as a prayer guide.  (1040A and EZ filers can modify this guide for their use, as well.)

So grab a copy of your tax return and take it to the Lord in prayer. Here are your instructions:

  1. Review your filing status (boxes 1-5) and give thanks to a sovereign God who has called you to a season of singleness, marriage or widowhood.  If you are married, thank God for your wife or husband.  If you are not married thank him for friends, family members and others who share life with you.
  2. Did you check any of the boxes 6a-6d?  If you have dependent children, thank God for each one of them by name.  If there are other persons who are dependent on you, give thanks for them and for your ability to help provide for them.
  3. Review lines 7-22.  Thank God for the job and other means he has given you to support the life he is calling you to live.
  4. Look at your Forms W-2 and pray for your employer.
  5. Did you complete a Schedule A?
    • Look at line 9. Thank God for the ability to pay taxes.  Give thanks for roads, schools and social services that serve you, your family and our community.
    • If you claim mortgage interest on line 10, give thanks for the house God has given you to live in. 
    • Look at lines 16-19.  What stories do they tell?  How have you responded to the privilege and the obligation to give out of your abundance to the work of the Kingdom?  Give thanks for the ministry of LPC and other Christian ministries and missions you were able to support. 
    • Check line 19.  How does it compare to lines 22 or 38 of your Form 1040?  Does it represent the kind of giving to which Scripture calls us?  Pray for ways that you can grow in your giving in the future.
  6. Now back to Form 1040.  Did you check line 49?  Thank God for the gift of education and pray for the family member who is in school.
  7. If you checked line 50, be thankful that you were able to be a good steward of the environment last year.  Ask God to show you other ways to care for the creation.
  8. Did you check line 53?  Pray for the ways that God might be calling you to use your retirement years in his service and for his glory. 
  9. Look at line 63.  Give thanks for our country and the privilege of supporting it through your taxes.  Pray for the president and our leaders.  Pray for the men and women serving in the armed forces.  Pray that we might be a more just and righteous nation.
  10. Is there an entry at line 74a?  Why not give at least 10% (or maybe 100%) of that amount to the work of Christ’s church.
  11. Did you end up with an entry on line 76?  Give thanks!  You can do all things through Christ who strengthens you!
  12. Sing or pray:  Praise God from whom all blessings flow; praise him all creatures here below;  praise him above, ye heavenly host; praise Father, Son and Holy Ghost.

The great Dutch theologian and statesman, Abraham Kuyper, once said, "There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry: 'Mine!'"  Even taxes.