Remission - A Complete Reversal

     Sorry that I haven't written in a few days.  I've been cooking, cleaning carpets, baseboards, bathrooms, floors, etc, but most of all I have been enjoying that Nick is at home.  We have to go back to Vanderbilt this Friday for chemo, but it will just be an outpatient thing (We may have to stay a couple of nights...don't know yet).  Nick is doing amazingly well.  He is in remission, has had very little nausea, and has not lost any hair.  I'm in awe of God's intervention.
     Since last Saturday morning when we were told that we were going home because Nick was stable and in remission I have been thinking about that word, remission.  When I looked up the definition it was basically defined as the absence of disease in a formerly critically ill person, with the  possibility of the disease returning.  However, the Biblical definition of remission is the total annihilation of sin and it's consequence of death.  When we have our sins remitted we become a whole new creation.  Do we still sin?  Yes, but the difference is that the eternal deadliness has been taken out of the sin.  Jesus shed His precious blood for the purpose of remitting our sins.  He took the death that we deserved because of sin, and in return has given us eternal life.
     Right after Jesus was resurrected the Apostles were hiding in a room for fear that the authorities would find them and punish them for being followers of Jesus (John 20:19 - 23.)  Jesus then appeared to them behind the locked doors.  They didn't know Him at first, but when they saw His hands and feet they knew it was Jesus.  Jesus twice spoke "Peace" over them, and then breathed on them saying, "Receive the Holy Spirit.  If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained."   The King James version reads, "Receive ye the Holy Ghost; Whose soever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them; and whose soever sins ye retain, they are retained."  The Greek word for remit and remitted literally means to send away or omit, and it's root word means a complete reversal.
     O.k... so they were filled with the Holy Ghost, sent out, and given the power to remit sins.  Talk about the power of life and death being found in our tongues (James 3.) ....And I'm pretty sure that we, as Holy Ghost filled, Bible believing, saved and sanctified Christians are supposed to be walking around with the same power.  Now, is that the power of the proclaimed gospel?... Or is it something else completely?  I think that is is probably much more than we are willing to believe.  However, the only thing that I am sure about is that Jesus provides remission...of sins...of cancer...of addictions...of maladies of all kinds.  Jesus is the answer.
    To whom can you minister remission today?  It is well!