For more than a decade teams of intercessors have climbed mountaintops around Arizona to usher in the New Year at sunrise. With Micah 4:2 in mind (“Come, let us go up to the mountain of the LORD”), intercessors consider this a literal mountaintop experience and a fantastic way to start off the year by honoring God and praying over the land.

     The call for mountaintop prayer began publicly in 2000, although some intercessors have been doing this on their own for 20 years or more. Certainly Arizona’s warmer climate and many accessible hilltops facilitate this tradition, though some participants choose high places not so easily scaled. One participant set out hours before sunrise and braved sub-zero temperatures and blizzard conditions to snowshoe four and half miles up the highest point of Arizona near Flagstaff in time for sunrise—Humphrey’s Peak at 12,633 feet!

Biblical High Places

Mountaintop prayer is raw Bible. There are more than 700 passages that speak of mountaintops, hilltops, and “high places” where vision, warfare, sacrifice, authority and many other powerful concepts are illustrated. Every year Arizona Call to Prayer desires to honor God and lift up His name over Arizona. They receive many testimonies of moving experiences and answers to prayer.

     A typical mountaintop prayer schedule begins with a team assembling at the base of the mountain and then hiking up to the top together, allowing for personal time with the Lord for about 20 minutes prior to sunrise. Just before sunrise everyone re-gathers in time for the blowing of the shofar precisely at the official sunrise time as determined by the US Naval Observatory website (7:32am in Phoenix, Arizona on Jan. 1, 2012).

     It is inspiring to hear the shofar sound at daybreak on a mountain, and sometimes participants even hear another shofar in the distance. After the shofar sounds, then a simple communion is held followed by short prayers and petitions for good government, healthy families, and other blessings and declarations over the land.

     In recent years the New Year’s mountaintop prayer event has spread to locations in California, New Mexico, Texas, and even a few cities along the border in Mexico. Isaiah 42 speaks of the “coastlands” as partners with those praying on the mountains:

 Let them shout for joy from the tops of the mountains. Let them give glory to the LORD and declare His praise in the coastlands. The LORD will go forth like a warrior, He will arouse His zeal like a man of war. He will utter a shout, yes, He will raise a war cry. He will prevail against His enemies (vs. 11-13, NASB).

GUY CHADWICK is a part of Arizona Call to Prayer, a ministry of BridgeBuilders, Intl.