Revival preacher overcomes nerves, witnesses great works of God

When Marko Juricek stepped into the pulpit to preach on the first day of his “Revive This Nation” evangelism assignment, he had only preached once before, and he had done so in his native language, Croatian. So, this sermon—delivered to a congregation is Las Cruces, N.M.—would be his second-ever sermon, and his first in English.

“I was a little bit nervous,” says Juricek, a Master of Divinity student at Southwestern Seminary. “Actually, I was freaking out.”

Prior to that Sunday morning, Juricek had shared his unease with the church’s pastor. The pastor told him, “You know what, brother? If the only point of this is for you to get experience, we are good with that.”

“So I tried to prepare as best as I could to preach the Word,” Juricek says. “And God blessed us.”

The pastor told Juricek that his hope for the revival was that his people would be encouraged. An older congregation of roughly 60 individuals, the church currently lacks any young families with children. Planted 30 years ago in what was then “the middle of nowhere,” the church now sits adjacent to a trailer park filled with people who need to know the Lord. The pastor acknowledged the church’s potential and essentially asked that Juricek give them a proper push.

On Sunday morning, after Juricek proclaimed the Word of the Lord in spite of his nerves, a woman approached him and said that she sensed the Lord calling her to full-time vocational ministry. One of the church’s deacons told him the same thing the following night. With counsel from Juricek, this deacon, currently in the military, is now exploring the possibility of enrolling in Southwestern Seminary.

Juricek was encouraged by these results, and God was also granting him and church members opportunities to speak with residents of the trailer park adjacent to the church prior to the evening services each day. But going into Tuesday, the church had still not seen anyone come to faith in Christ during the revival.

Following the Tuesday night service, as Juricek greeted members of the congregation, he noticed his wife speaking to two teenagers—a girl and a boy. He went over to them, and his wife said, “We have great news. She received the Lord yesterday after the service. And this young man just did the same.”

“Wow,” Juricek said. He continued facetiously, “Why didn’t anyone share that with me? I was so nervous.”

In witnessing these two salvations as well as two people accepting the call to ministry, Juricek realized that God had certainly blessed the revival—and he had overcome his anxiety in the process. “We [my wife and I] were encouraged, and they [the church] were encouraged,” he says.

“This is great—what happened. But I hope that they were able to catch their purpose and their identity that they have, which is to be a light to that neighborhood. The next coming weeks are going to show that.”