The Reason For the Garment of Praise

Proverbs says that heaviness in the heart of a woman makes it "stoop", but a good word makes it glad.

There is no greater heaviness than to be, to even the smallest degree, responsible for your own righteousness before a holy God. (If you think you can handle that, you don't understand His holiness. Or you have a skewed opinion of how very much you fall short.)

There is no greater good word than the Gospel. If you are continually exposed to the preaching of it, if you continually soak yourself in the reading of it, your mind begins to be renewed in it. There is such power in the good news of the finished work of Christ.

Your falling short was credited to Him, and His obedience is credited to you. The mountains will melt away and the hills depart, and in fact, God will no longer be God, if He breaks His promise to never be angry with you, once your life is hidden with Christ. God would have to be angry with Christ.

Your woman's heart, with all its overload of guilt and depression, loneliness and stress and responsibilities, can completely trust in the lovingkindness of God, through the cross of Jesus Christ.

The law as a standard of righteousness?

Yes.

The law as a means of righteousness?

No.

When a woman's heart looks to the law, even partially, as a means of right standing, and therefore blessing and favor, the door is thrown open to all kinds of psychosis. Dis-ease in the mind always results in disease in the body.

Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no Physician? Absolutely, there is. And He has clothed you in righteousness, and topped it with a garment of praise. Put. It. On.

You cannot know how personally I know these things.