Jesus said to him, 'You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.' This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like it: 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' -Matthew 22:37–39
Love. I honestly can't think of a better word to describe my friends Stephanie and Denbigh Cherry. They genuinely love the Lord with all their hearts.....it is evident in everything they do, say and are. They are lovely people.
It has been a joy to watch God stretch them and grow them as they restore this lovely house, "Gomer's House" in Fentress, Texas - and all in order to love people, and to love and bring glory to the Lord.
It is my honor to present to you this blog entry from my friend Stephanie Cherry.
In the beginning our marriage, God had given us opportunities to house different people in our small, single family home. Then five years ago, God started turning our hearts to provide a place of healing for people. At the end of 2007, God told us to sell our home. Not knowing where we were going, we put our home on the market. In April of 2008, our house sold for full price even though the exact model next door had sold for $10,000 less just a month earlier. This began our Abrahamic season where we stayed with four different friends for a nine month period. During this time, we began fervently asking the Lord where we were to be and exactly what we were to be doing. He showed us pastors that were hurting, people hurt by pastors, missionaries in need of refreshing, and we personally lost two brothers to drug addiction.
How was God going to tie all of this together?
One day we prayed and asked God for a miracle of direction. While perusing Craig’s List for something completely unrelated, we found a 3 story, 100 year old house in a town we had never heard of. God miraculously provided the down payment and we were set to begin. As we moved into the house in January of 2009, we began to see how God was going to use us to reach such a wide array of people. This glorious house is situated amongst a poor and drug ravaged neighborhood.
God graciously brought us people to completely redo all of our plumbing and much of our electrical so that we could live in the house. Volunteers have continued to stream in over the course of the last year bringing much of what we needed.People always ask if we know that Gomer was a prostitute. Two years ago, while studying the book of Hosea, God clearly told us that this was to be the name of the respite. Hosea was one of God’s main men during his time and his wife was a drug addict and a prostitute. If this was going on in Hosea’s home, we can only imagine the need for healing in homes of ministers today.
We thought that God would finish our house before He started sending people to us. Several months after we moved in, He started sending people to stay and rest and find healing. It is a beautiful testimony of how God can use 5,500 square feet in need of desperate restoration to minister. .I ask that you pray for the people living in Fentress. Pray for those here that are captive to drug and alcohol addiction to be set free. Pray that their hearts would be prepared to hear the good news and receive Christ.
Several times during prayer for the drug addicts in our neighborhood, the very people we have been praying for would knock on our door. They often volunteer here.
We are humbled that God is allowing us to work with him in our community. We are currently praying about a door that has opened to start a church here.
22ONE7 Ministries
Thank you Stephanie, for sharing what the Lord is doing in you, your family, your ministry and at Gomer's House.
Please pray with me for the Cherry family and for Gomer's house. If you'd like to learn more about their ministry, you can visit their blog by going to: http://www.stephaniecherry.com/
"Come!" Whoever is thirsty, let him come; and whoever wishes, let him take the free gift of the water of life.” -Revelation 22:17
†Gomer's House is being restored to serve as a respite to the least, the last, and the broken.
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