Aint No Stoppin Lyrics

It's Brian, your lunatic friend.

You ever wonder why I never claim to be a preacher

or a music minister?

I'm a believer in those things are kinda true.

But I've often referred to myself

as a pragmatic fundamentalist.

Because of the back of my mind,

I'm aware that I could always be wrong.

And it's one of the reasons that I follow Jesus.

Cause I don't think he ever was.

And if I think he is, then I probably am.

Somebody asked me just the other day

why I refer to myself as your friend on the back row.

And I tell him because I like to hide the chip

on my shoulder on my blind side.

So I tell him this because this episode of Jesus

and music is a pragmatic look at my theology.

The song Ain't No Stop and Now is on the anonymous

confessions of a lunatic friend.

And I'll tell you that I did this record

in the middle of my Christian career

right when I felt like I needed therapy

or counseling or something.

And I kinda wondered where Christian gets counseling.

Cause I'd started to discover that I couldn't even admit

that I had any faults.

But then I had an ongoing struggle with a lot of my own sins.

I mean, I didn't ask forgiveness and then quit.

The trouble with sin isn't right when you think

you're done with it, you're forsaking at all

and following Jesus, it comes back to you.

That's right, sin has a boomerang capability.

When they told me to be honest and transparent in my songs,

I thought that meant that it would make me a bigger artist.

And I would discover that that wasn't true

in Christian circles, they wanted something specific

and they didn't want to know a bunch of stuff.

Yeah, they call it corporate worship now.

And maybe the idea is if we focus on God all the time

and only him we won't have time to sin.

And in our new relationship with Jesus,

we won't have that honeymoon experience

that kind of wears off in the daily routine of things.

So in my suicidal tendency, I wrote a song called,

I've got this lunatic friend.

Cause I noticed that people in church

wouldn't say they had a problem.

They would say they had a friend who had a problem.

And I'll just admit that in the middle

of recording this album, I was getting kind of depressed

because I couldn't say the happy things

that people wanted to hear.

At least not with any conviction.

And that's when Dan Postman, when my producer said,

you should just go home and write a song about nothing.

Cause I think you're thinking too hard.

And that brings us to this song that I wrote called,

there ain't no stopping now.

It was born out of the fact that I was recording an album

and I was right in the middle of it.

And I was arguing in my own head

between the things I wanted to say

and the things they wanted me to say.

And now that pressure wasn't coming from my producer,

he was a godly man who believed in the strength of the truth

that it would stand up no matter what else happened.

And it's amazing as a producer

that he trusted God with my life and the things I had to say.

And so with that in mind, I'll give you the lyrics

to the song, ain't no stopping now.

And first of all, this song came to me

because my wife was quoting some of the lyrics

from it yesterday.

And when I get to those lyrics, I will mention again

that it was a ministry to her.

And the first line of this song is so conveniently current

that it could almost be a prophecy.

I wrote it 36 years ago and it's still true today.

And I opened with the first line

and a frantic, exasperated sort of way.

Well, the world's full of crazy people

haven't got a clue to who they are.

And I was mostly thinking of myself on this second line

where I say, in a corner standing face down,

hands in your pockets all the time

because that's what depression looks like to me.

Standing in line at the carnival,

waiting on a plane or the bus station.

And the third line is always worried,

busy shouting, carrying on about the way things ought to be.

And I swear that sounds like social media to me nowadays.

And here's the perfect time for the lyrics to say,

let's forsake it, break it up, take it easy,

make it light for a while.

And I interject at a little lick between every line

so that you'd have time to think about it.

Whoa.

And an answer, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's kind of a little rock and roll version

of a man, brother, preach it.

And that little no lyric, call and response thing

got popular years later.

And here's just a chance for the horn section

to kick in and the band can start grooving.

Well, I had a few free interjections about what life can be like.

It'd be like a roller coaster ride

or a flash flood on the inside

or maybe an avalanche of snowfall coming down

or like no breaks on a race car.

But in every scenario, there ain't no stop it now.

And now comes the words that were encouraging

to my wife in the last couple of weeks.

We're in the second verse I sing.

Now God wouldn't tell you what to do

if he knew you couldn't make it y'all.

And here you interject, yes, a man, brother, preach it.

And then I add, life is good news and it's bad.

You can laugh or just get mad, it's still the same.

And again, something my wife understands.

Get acquainted with your pain,

but it won't make it easier.

And then comes my favorite line for myself.

There's a time to be happy, there's a time to be said.

Let's take the first one.

And we're back to the chorus, yeah, preach it y'all.

There ain't no stop it now.

And here's where we go back to more free word associations.

Starts with a free fall from an airplane

or maybe a silver bullet fired from a gun

or a step beyond the point of no return.

And here in this song is where we take a break,

even in a song that's about taking a break.

In the musical bridge, Bob Carlisle joins me on this song,

find a safety belt, hook it up, pull it tight

cause there won't be no stoppin' in this place tonight.

And then I add in the bridge by myself,

count down to ignition, take me worlds away.

Ain't no hangin' round till your heaven bound

cause that ain't the way to live your life today.

And then I go out after a long groove with the band

and a solo by the bass player,

lyrically back to where we started

in a corner stand and face down hands

in your pockets all the time.

Let's forsake it, break it up, take it easy,

make it light for a while.

And here's where I go out with all of the free word

associations that I came up with.

And I think I added one or two.

Be like a roller coaster ride or a flash flood on the inside

or an avalanche of snowfall comin' down.

Like no breaks on a race car or like a rocket launched.

A free fall from an airplane.

We're silver bullet fired from a gun

or a step beyond the point of no return.

And that my friends is a song about nothin'.

And I was just thinkin' that once you're born

there ain't no stoppin' now.

But here's one last reason that I will leave you with

about why I follow Jesus

because life does come with term limits.

And if you walk with him Jesus says

he promises you eternal life after this.

And the Bible says it comes with a new heavens

and a new earth.

And personally I'm counting on less irritations.

Because otherwise it wouldn't really be heaven, would it?

And this has been Jesus of music lyrics

from your friend on the back row.

Thanks for lessonin' and refusing to be dismissed.