Hello Coonie:
I would like to encourage you to seek God's Will for your life in this time of distress & ALWAYS!!!
You've asked if you are being punished for not having kept your promise to God........
The Lord knew you'd be unable to fulfill your promise to Him, but it did not stop Him
from granting your request.....
It may seem odd for me to say this, but
The Lord is not a "business" where in we "pay for miracles rendered".
God desires obedience, not sacrifice........
Everything belongs to Him because He made everything..
Therefore there isn't any offering that we can give to Him,
for His goodness towards us.
That is why HE GAVE His Son,
so that through faith in Christ Jesus our sins could be forgiven us.
Glen openly shared some of his own testimony,
a testimony of GODS GOODNESS TO HIM and not of his own ability!!!!
He humbly admits that he didn't keep his promise, but that didn't stop God from being GOOD TO HIM!!!
ALL THE GLORY IS GODS!! Bit by bit He has made him into a new creation, to declare His Praises...
The difficult question I would ask is:
are the things that are happening with your business, home and family random acts of chance
or are there decisions that have led, at least in part to what is now transpiring?
Has your focus been upon not smoking,
or the amount that you've smoked since you made that promise?
God wants the loyalty of our hearts, not sacrifices -
HE MADE THE ULTIMATE SACRIFICE for You and I, for the world,
And there is no competing with that.
By giving up His Son for us all.
It's a matter of humbly accepting what He has done
for us when we didn't deserve it, when we had nothing to give HE GAVE!!
We make promises we can't keep, but God doesn't..
Rom 10:9
That if you confess with your mouth, "Jesus is Lord,"
and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.
In closing I'd like to say
It's prudent not to take God's grace for granted, because He isn't an 911 emergency service
that will run to our aid when we are facing the consequences of choices we've made after
we've turned and gone our own way,,,, we can't expect Him to fix what we break.
When He does it's a testimony to His Unmerited Grace, but when He doesn't it's not due to His lack of Goodness.
In fact it can be due to His goodness, for it's those times that we seek and even draw nearer to Him.
God give you both the wisdom to know what to do now in your current situation and the will to do it.
I cannot predict what will happen with your family, but I do know God cares for them and He will provide,
in His way and in His time.
BE STILL AND KNOW THAT HE IS GOD & HE WILL MAKE YOU A TESTIMONY IN HIS PERFECT TIME
In His Abiding Love
d.light