As The Deer / Nothing But The Blood

Citipointe Worship's "As the Deer / Nothing But the Blood" pairs two of the most enduring modern hymns into one continuous piece, starting with Martin Nystrom's 1984 setting of Psalm 42: "as the deer panteth for the water, so my soul longeth after Thee." The psalm's own image is of genuine physical desperation, not casual preference — a deer that has to find water or die, used to describe how urgently the soul needs God.

"You're my friend and You are my brother, even though You are a King" holds two things in tension without resolving the strangeness — genuine closeness and genuine authority in the same relationship, a King who is also, somehow, a brother and a friend.

The transition into "Nothing but the Blood of Jesus" shifts the song from longing to certainty: "what can wash away my sin? Nothing but the blood of Jesus." Where the first hymn is mostly desire reaching toward something, the second is an answer already settled — the same soul that spent the first half thirsting for God finds, by the second half, exactly what it needed to actually be made clean.