One of Christian music’s premier bands, Downhere, returns with their eagerly anticipated new fifth studio album, On The Altar Of Love, on Centricity Music.

As students of history, Downhere band members Jeremy, Jason, Marc and Glenn have come to recognize and appreciate the fact that their faith is not simply their own--but that it's part of a much larger communion of believers that stretches across cultures and thousands of years. The new album is a pop-driven project that offers a positive outlook for our future, while maintaining the integrity and artistry of Downhere, one of my all-time favorite bands. All songs on the album were written by Jason Germain and Marc Martel. “Let Me Rediscover You,” the first single from the album, was written by Marc Martel two weeks before Downhere entered the recording studio for On The Altar Of Love.

On The Altar Of Love is being described as one of the most “pop-friendly” albums that Downhere has recorded to date, with heartfelt lyrics that are a return to the core of Christianity. To me, that description is apt in describing that if you’ve enjoyed the band’s previous hit songs “The More”, “Here I Am”, “My Last Amen”, “Hope Is Rising” and “How Many Kings,” then you need to pick up this masterpiece immediately. Every single song is catchy, engaging and loaded with Downhere’s signature gorgeous harmonies. If you aren’t familiar with this incredible band, this is a great primer.

I had the great opportunity to interview Marc Martel about current single “Let Me Rediscover You.” Here is what he shared with me about the song.

Please tell me about the background in writing the song "Let Me Rediscover You."

Last year, when Jason and I met you in-person at Creation Northeast and we talked about “You’re Not Alone,” we shared with you that we were struggling a little bit with writer’s block and we asked for prayer for God to reveal songs to us. It’s appropriate that we’re now talking about this song as it relates to that valley we walked through. 

We had our song meeting with our record label about which songs to put on our new album and I looked at the list of songs and I was disappointed in myself, honestly. We had two weeks left before we were going to record in the studio, but I didn’t feel like I had written the song that would really connect with our audience yet. So, I went back to the drawing board and sat at my piano in my studio. Jason and I always say to each other to just be honest in our songwriting and that’s the advice we give any songwriter. Because of the human experience, that will translate and people will be able to relate. I took it a step further and made a list of bullet points of who I am. I came up with a list that described myself and realized that everything on the list was about Jesus, friends of mine who know Jesus and everything in my life revolves around Him and my church. 

I was proud of myself and then I realized that’s not really me. There’s sin that has corrupted me. My need for Christ is so huge, even on a foundational level my understanding of who He is has been tainted by my sinful and hurtful experiences, and people who I have hurt. All of those experiences influence how I know God. Our True God has made Himself known and wants to be known by us. We’ve all got that list of who we are and we’ve all got our lists of how we know God. This is a prayer to shine through all of that corruption that sin has brought and to experience God’s true character. To discover Him again for the first time.

Do you have a life verse or any Bible verses you think goes with the song?

The Bible verse that inspired me to write the song is Genesis 1:2: Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.

What’s the takeaway message about the song?

That passage of Scripture has always captivated me. What does that look like? The Spirit of God hovering over the waters. It put me in the frame of mind of the fact that God is eternal and we can’t fully know Him, but He wants to be known by us. He pre-existed and little experiences that we have seem so small compared to our eternal, all-powerful Creator. His grace and mercy allows us to get to know Him.

If I’m going to go on stage every night and sing about Jesus and invite people to get to know Him, then I’ve got a big responsibility to get to know Him. As an eternal God, we all have a long way to go to really get to know Him. I hope that a lot of people will relate to the song.

After a few years of playing “How Many Kings” on stage, one time after introducing the song, a little girl in the front of the crowd sang along to every word of the song, and her face lit up when we started to sing it. Growing up in Montreal, we didn’t have Christian radio. I was exposed to a few artists like Michael W. Smith and Jars of Clay, but I most heard mainstream music. As an artist, in the past, I’ve always wanted to write music that might seem new and that I’d never heard before. Once I saw that little girl’s response to “How Many Kings,” it was a life changing experience.

The need to be a quirky, different, off the beaten path artist went away from me in a good way. It’s neat to be a unique artist, but we want to reach people, especially with the message that we want to get across. I want to continue to write songs that are immediately accessible to people. This is my version of “A Better Way.”

Here are the lyrics:

Your spirit hovers over my waters
Your love burns longer than the sun
The skies of thunder echo Your wonder
Your praises can’t be oversung

The whole universe is witness to only a part of what You’ve done

So let me rediscover You
And breathe in me Your life anew
Tell me of the God I never knew
Oh let me rediscover You

You see my weakness
My pride, my blindness
You wield Your power through them all
Of all the mysteries still
The greatest to me is that You’re faithful when I fall

How can I say I know You
When what I know is still so small

So let me rediscover You
And breathe in me Your life anew
Tell me of the God I never knew
And let me rediscover You

Let me cry “Holy holy holy” (Holy holy holy)
Let me awaken to Your majesty
And see a glimmer of Your glory
Let me abide in You

So let me rediscover You
And by Your grace I’ll follow through
Reveal to me the God I thought I knew

Let me rediscover You
And breathe in me Your life anew
Tell me of the God I never knew
And let me rediscover You
Oh oh oh
Let me rediscover You

Tell me of the God I never knew
Jesus let me rediscover You

Here’s Asbury’s Bible commentary on Genesis 1:2: “The emphasis of the entire book of Genesis is unmistakably upon God—a God who brings the world into being, acts Sovereignly over His creation, enters into covenant relationship with it, transforms it, and maintains it. It represents a story of a relationship between the Creator and His creation. That relationship forms the basis of all of history in general and of salvation history in particular. That is, there was a divine purpose for creation. Creation belonged to its Creator, and He had a revealed purpose for it.

“The opening section of Genesis, perhaps the best-known portion of the Scripture, clearly establishes the God of the Bible as the God of creation. He calls the world into being and, in accordance with His will, He desires harmony with His creation. The narrative of the first eleven chapters, however, demonstrates that the world God created is unresponsive to His call. God's will is distorted by the serpent and blatantly disobeyed by humankind. The result is the total disintegration of the harmonious, ideal state envisaged by the Creator. Genesis' primeval history poses the problem that underlies the dilemma of relationship between Creator and creation, which spans both the OT and NT and is not ultimately resolved until the kingdom of God is realized eschatologically in the final scenes of the book of Revelation: “The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ, and he will reign for ever and ever.”

I absolutely love this band and this new song. I really appreciated Marc’s insight into the song, especially as I thought about how we need to be in community with each other and lift each other up when we’re feeling isolated. Downhere’s lyrics always connect with me, whether from my all-time favorite song “A Better Way,” or “Here I Am,” which is based on my life verse, Isaiah 6:8.

“Let Me Rediscover You” is a surefire hit song and has become my personal worship anthem, similar in theme to “Here I Am” and “A Better Way.” This is so sincere and engaging, you can’t help but be moved to cry out to God: “Let me rediscover You, and by Your grace I’ll follow through, breathe in me a life anew, reveal to me the God I thought I knew, Jesus let me rediscover You.”

This band just has a knack for hitting me where I am, spiritually. The song expresses the biblical truth that what we can’t find in ourselves alone, we can find in the community of believers and in our relationship with God. God’s community with us is that He sent Jesus to die for us and gave us the gift of the Holy Spirit within each one of us. With everything going on in our world, we need the encouragement that God is with us and we’re not alone. There is no day and no hour of the day in which our Lord Jesus is not present.

(Check out the song's music video here.)