My Last Amen
by Marc Martel of Downhere
When I was young, no other song could get me on my Christian high horse like “I Can’t Get No Satisfaction.” “If Mick Jagger only knew Jesus!” I would think to myself, knowing that if he did, he certainly wouldn’t be singing a song like that. But now, having lived a few more years, I’ve come around to realize that I completely agree with the lead singer’s astute observation. We really can’t get no satisfaction (all grammatical criticism aside). Not in this life anyway. What Jagger missed, though, is that it’s not necessarily a bad thing.
God’s Word says that He has put eternity in our hearts. That helps me understand why we came up with religion as a method of searching out the less tangible side of existence. It’s a part of my very nature to want more than this life can offer. It’s this “eternity” in my heart that gives me a longing for what’s beyond the natural, beyond the temporal, past the time I occupy down here on Earth. I believe it’s the reason why so many poets and songwriters can’t help but write lyrics echoing the sentiment of that song by the Stones, or U2′s “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” (correct me if I’m wrong, Bono). It’s the very reason why we are – if we’re all very honest – unsatisfied.
For me, it’s that longing that keeps me writing songs. This may sound kind of mystical or whatever, but I can’t tell you how many times I have found myself jamming along in my bedroom, and a magical musical moment will pass where I have to stop and go, “Ok… what the heck was that I just played?!” And even if I play or sing the exact same thing again, that feeling I had the first time isn’t there anymore – and somehow I know I won’t get it back. Each time I start a new song, subconsciously I’m hoping I’ll capture that moment more purely than I did with the last song (that’s the plan anyway!). Ironically enough, I get fulfillment out of that. Maybe those moments in my bedroom are little clues that God leaves for me to show me there is something far better, and that one day I’ll have it. Like being unsatisfied gives me hope in looking forward to the day when I will be satisfied.
The catch for all of us is, if not in this life, then when? Our greatest hope as followers of Jesus is that he has defeated the power of death that once kept us separate from God because of sin. For believers in Christ, death is no longer the end, but the beginning of true fulfillment. We are destined to be in the presence of God eternally after this life is over. I’ve been a Christian since I was a kid, but still when I see the word “death”, I can sometimes imagine evil red eyes staring back at me. Guess I still have a ways to go with that. Or maybe I’m brainwashed by Hallowe’en decorations! Either way, death goes against everything we desire. It’s one of the few things that I think every culture agrees on: death is wrong. So we come up with slogans like “Carpe Diem” to help us to enjoy every second of this life because when you die, you’re done. But God’s Word tells us that when Jesus died on the cross, all of that changed. Somehow he changed it so completely that for those of us who put our trust in Him, even the idea of death has been turned on its head… changing it from the most dreadful thing, into this glorious point of rendezvous with our Savior. I’ve always envied believers who have a real clear understanding of that. I remember back in college, overhearing a few girls – one whom I had an enormous crush on – who were deep in a discussion about death. One girl was saying she didn’t want to die before she got to experience the joys of marriage and having her own children. The prettiest girl in the group, my said crush, proceeded to emphatically disagree, saying she couldn’t wait for the Lord to take her because being with Him would be so much greater than any earthly pleasure. Sure, it was Bible College and all, but I could tell by the tone of her voice that she honestly meant it. She actually sounded excited! How mature is that? How HOT is that! As a 31-year-old now, knowing that my chances of expiring are still 100%, the idea still feels very foreign and surreal. But even though it might cause a little rush of discomfort in my gut, I know it’s not scary. Do I look forward to it? Still working on that one. That said, I can’t imagine looking at death coming at me, slowly but surely down the road, without knowing Jesus. How dreadfully terrifying that must be. I guess that’s why the subject is so seldom broached.
Today, I can hear “I Can’t Get No Satisfaction”, not with condescending pity, but hope. In my relationship with Christ, I try to view my life as a kind of prayer, with death as the final punctuation… the Amen. If you’re not a musician, I’m sure there are other things that set off that sense of “eternity in your heart”. Like when you find yourself doing the things you love most. For me, it’s mostly in music, or sometimes in being with the people I love. An old hymn called “The Lost Chord” is what inspired “My Last Amen”, and I’ll leave you with the lyrics:
I know not what I was playing
Or what I was dreaming then,
But I struck one chord of music
Like the sound of a great amen.
It flooded the crimson twilight
Like the close of an angel’s psalm,
And it lay on my fevered spirit
Like the touch of an infinite calm.
I have sought but I seek it vainly,
That one lost chord divine,
Which came through the soul of the organ
And entered into mine.
It may be that Death’s bright angel
Will speak in that chord again,
It may be that only in Heaven
I shall hear that Grand Amen.
Amen brother!
To hear the song, “My Last Amen”, from Downhere visit:
http://www.centricitymusic.com/downhere/music
September 12, 2008 at 3:47 am |
I just wanted to say how much I appreciate what you all are doing. It is really awesome that you all are not only writing songs, but are sharing the message behind them, and taking that message and creating devotions. It is a rare thing for a band, even a Christian one, to be so transparent about their faith. It means a lot to me to discover that other Christians are dealing with some of the exact same struggles as I am. Thank you for revealing that and for letting God use you, both through your music and through these devotions. I’m praying for you!
September 12, 2008 at 3:17 pm |
Marc, I gave you a hard time for being so quiet but what comes out in your music is amazing! Love this song because I think that this is something every Christian (if they want to be real) struggles with: the desire to do things, experience things on this earth but at the same time, look forward to our eternal home. Your heart is truly torn at times: for me, I want to see my children, finish college, marry, enjoy grandchildren… but, I know what is in store for me in heaven is far better yet than any of those things, and I know my family I will see again! Thanks for sharing your thoughts, your heart, your convictions. That is what Brian and I love about Downhere’s music is that you don’t mince words, you share God’s truth and you share struggles that we all relate to so much. Keep up the great ministry!—-Deb
September 22, 2008 at 6:23 pm |
I need the lyrics of My Lasy Amen! Please… (I speak spanish… so its hard to understand the lyrics…)
September 29, 2008 at 10:25 pm |
What a great insight into our human condition, Marc. For so many people the lack of satisfaction in life leads them to desperation and death. It’s so hard to keep the hope.
But as you said, that feeling can turn into a positive drive towards what is divine – and I just made a rhyme!
It’s a great song (I love the latin vibe on it – it makes me wanna dance!).
Downhere has been such a blessing for me. I pray you continue reaching more and more people with your music, from Australia (where I live) to Brazil (where I was born).
November 17, 2008 at 4:13 am |
By keeping my hobbies and passions downplayed, I avoided reaching the end of myself for a long time. It’s in becoming almost painfully passionate about music that I’m able to admit my truest longings. (So much for the philosophy of letting go of kleshas!) It’s in exploring and facing my limits that I can see eternity is all that will satisfy.
I am curious if “Daniel” got a Spanish translation of the lyrics? I know a good amount of Spanish, and know other people who know it fluently, and would be happy to work on translations of the lyrics. Not necessarily singable, but idea for idea, line for line.
January 4, 2009 at 11:27 am |
I love to sing, but don’t have the greatest voice. I raise my hands in praise to God, but never in public, only when I’m alone in my room. I look forward to the day when I will sing praises to God and raise my hands in perfect praise, with all of you (believers), and we’ll all have voices purer than we could ever process with these mortal ears and minds. I long for the day when I will see clearly and know fully, even as I am fully known (1 Cor. 13:12) and see God and others with an unveiled face and heart (2 Cor. 3:12-18). Until then, let’s keep praying for each other, and for those who haven’t accepted Christ as Savior.
Downhere: God bless you guys!
February 22, 2009 at 5:32 am |
Marc, I recently got the Ending Is Beginning album and I can’t stop listening to it. I have never heard anything so beautiful that touched my heart in so many ways. I grew up as a non believer. I went down the wrong path. My mother would pray for me everyday.
Now at 31 years old, I am a mother of three boys. Two of them have disabilities. I was abused by their dad for 10 years. I don’t know how people do it without God’s help. I’ve had to look to God as my father, my friend AND my husband.- Alot of people don’t get that.
The Lord led one of my friends to show me Isaiah 54: “Many are the children of the desolate woman”…”Like a woman who married young only to be rejected, your Maker is your husband, the Lord almighty is his name.”
The Lord knows us better than we know ourselves! I can’t even put into words what all I have been through and all that the Lord has taken me through. It’s definetly a process and there are times that I don’t feel as close to Him and there are times when I’m so overwhelmed with Joy that I feel like crying because I don’t want to lose it and it is just so much. At those times, I just laugh and usually it’s when I’m driving and having a moment with Him. I have learned to just talk to Him. I have to. Even if my kids are there. Even if I look crazy to others.
I’m not a musician but I know what you mean about how He shows you a glimpse of eternity and then it never comes back the same way. I even tried to get a journal and write down times He really spoke to my heart and when I go back to them it’s just not the same as that time. There is one I wrote down that is very deep and from what you said I feel comfortable sharing a little of what the Lord put on my heart. While driving home one day I prayed “Lord, I can’t do this. My kids need a real dad and I need a real husband, yet I know to be wise is to seek Your will for me and my children, not mine.” He spoke to my heart, my conscience and convicted me. It was kind of like I started out telling myself what deep in my heart I knew and then He became clearer to me-”If I can’t submit to you, how will I submit to a Godly husband? How will my children ever know what a father should be like if I don’t teach them your character? If I feel like I have to earn grace, then how could I be open to the unconditional love from my husband?” “It’s not just your heart Tracie, it’s the hearts of your children and the man you marry that I must prepare also. I know your heart. You are not ready. I have much to do in you, I must prepare you for those desires, if I just gave them to you, you could not handle them on your own strength, you must grow in me. I have much work to do in you. I have work to do in the hearts of your children. I need you to discipline them, give them correction and love them, show them my character through this and they will listen. Their hearts are innocent and their minds are curious and moldable and you must do this now. This is the kingdom that I want you to further, this is what I require of you. What you do with the least of these you do unto me, how can I trust you with much if I can not trust you with a few? I am not asking you to do this on your own strength, but on mine, it will get worse, it will be tough- but the rewards! The fruit it will yield in you! I am preparing you for something beautiful, why can’t you see this?!!” (This is about me being in college)- “It’s not a question of school, this question has been put there to discourage you- just follow me! Yes school is good, but what good if you do not apply what you learn? You are so worried of others in the world yet you do not see the hidden hurts in the hearts of your own children. They are three little lambs I need you to feed. – I know. I will show you how! I will guide you. You will mess up, you will fall short.Things will happen. There will be times they will fight you.You will feel helpless but do not feel hopeless because you have been faithful and done your part and then I must water the seed at those times. So do not get discouraged, they have free will also- you do your part, you love them, protect them with wisdom and discernment that I give you and the peace in knowing when to let go- Like you said Tracie-”being a parent has exposed more of my character to you than any other time in your life”. My children have free will- all of them- I love them- but I do not force them to choose to obey me- that is their choice-no matter how much I want them to. I love them, I want them to choose me. I know what is best for them but they don’t see it.” I told Him, “Lord, as humans we often have to stumble and fall before we actually notice that block- even if people tell us it’s there we have to find out on our own.” There is alot more to this. It gets very personal. God gets personal! With each of us! He is the most real thing we will ever have!
This moment I had with the Lord, as soon as I got home I worte it down as tears strolled down my face and I kept trying to hold onto Him, begging Him to not stop showing Himself to me. And it started dulling. Outside thoughts of things I had to do started forming. And they were things I guess I could justify that “I really should be doing them” like studying for a test, “oh, i have to pick the kids up soon.” “I should have walked the dog.” It’s crazy isn’t it. how easy thoughts can pop into our head. I love the music because I understand. It helps me put things in perspective. I get a deep feeling of joy when I hear it!
The Lord has blessed you, you are all so talented. There will be many temptations. Just keep glorifying Him!!!!
February 28, 2009 at 3:13 am |
I’ve been a fan of you guys for so long, but hadn’t really heard much of your stuff for a while. (Had some CD’s stolen a long while ago, oddly enough they only took the Christian CD’s, not the large binder holding all my secular music) I happened to look at your site last summer and saw that you were offering Wide Eyed and Mystified as a free album download, so I jumped on it. It was so good to hear you again, and to see that you sang with the same passion, wrote lyrics with the same depth (if not more) that I knew before. I didn’t realize when Ending Is Beginning came out and only just purchased it last week. I’m enjoying it a lot, My Last Amen in particular. Thanks for what you guys have allowed God to do with your talents!
I also really appreciate what you’ve said here on the blog. Talking about Mick Jagger and U2, showing how they’re close to being right, just a little off track in their delivery/thought. Reminds me of Ayn Rand’s “Anthem” which I really agreed with and enjoyed…until the end when the main character gave himself credit for everything. Just as we Christians will always have a human, flawed, sin nature… God created everyone. He’s in everything he created. So even non-believers are capable of doing Godly things, but as inspired as they may be, they rarely are executed properly. It’s something that can help us when looking at people, realizing that God is in the craftsmanship even if He’s not in the person’s heart. We can still appreciate the person and love them.
May 5, 2009 at 4:48 am |
Man I love your song My last Amen I mean so much that i’m listening to it right now! You guys are one of my favorite bands and i love your piano!! God Bless you and have an awsome day and keep making Jesus happy!
September 1, 2009 at 1:44 am |
Just wanted to tell you how meaningful “My Last Amen” is to me. I have many unsaved friends and family members who I want to touch “before it’s too late.” I’ve told a friend and still must put it in writing that I want this tune played at the very end of my funeral and LOUD! I think the lyrics speak volumes. Thanks a bunch and keep writing and singing!
September 20, 2009 at 7:22 pm |
Wow, The last Amen, what an amazing song. My friend introduced me to it with the devotional you wrote on it. The message is the same thing God is impressing on my friends and I, Heaven is a place to be desired and longed for. Our minds cannot comprehend how wonderful and complete it will be, but we should be meditating on the scriptures which declare it to be so. Then the things of this world will grow strangley dim….
September 28, 2009 at 8:16 pm |
Absolutely love this song! It’s breeds such an excitement about our unavoidable but highly anticipated appointment with death. When you actually grasp the reality that everything here on Earth is temporary and all things are only because our Lord allows us to have and experience them, and realize that the ultimate relationship and fulfillment is with Him, it causes you to begin longing for His complete direction in this life, and looking forward to an eternity in heavan with the One who is able to satisfy every desire and longing our souls could ever have. Your song absolutely celebrates in advance that glorious day when we meet our savior face to face. I can’t wait to see Him!
April 23, 2010 at 4:59 am |
I love “The Lost Chord” and I am touched by “My Last Amen” every time I listen.
It reminds me of a dear friend, we were theo buddies in college and years later we landed in Glendale, CA together where he was the youth pastor and I was the Bible Teacher for the same academy. Man, that was an amazing time
And David was such a great lion of God…. I really felt the Spirit’s presence when he would come down to my classroom after school and we would pray together over these kids.
He died one Sept in a really awful motor vehicle crash. I woke around 2 AM to the phone call, “David’s dead!” and I said, “What ?!?” but then as it came home to me, such a sense of peace ….. washed over over me and I experienced that undeniable presence, just like I felt when I would look up and see David from my classroom windows, coming down the hill. It was like I could sense the presence of God before he even opened my door. I almost felt like his spirit was there in my room telling me it was all okay, it was all good.
Two weeks before he died, David preached his last sermon. They taped it and then played it back at his funeral ….. David saying, “Whenever the Lord calls me, I’m ready! I’m so excited and I can’t wait to get to heaven! If anything happens to me, don’t worry and don’t grieve.” Remembering that night still gives me goosebumps.
Sometimes I ask God, “Why ?” He was so young. His life meant so much to the kids, the homeless in Hollywood, to me and all of us in the Fellowship …. but ever since he died, I have lost all fear of dying.
I still have a pic I took of him when we were back in college. It was Easter morning sunrise service. The lights were turned off in the campus church and we were waiting in the dark. Suddenly the timpani like a roll of thunder followed by a great shock of lightening, blinding spotlight; and David appeared, so tall and blond, dressed in a white robe, and filled with the love of God. Declaring “He is Risen!” to us as we stood and sang Hallelujah. My resurrection angel, I miss him so …but he just couldn’t wait for heaven.