Thanks for joining me for today's encouragement from Our Daily Bread.

I'm Mike Whitmer, and I entitled Our Reading, How They'll Know.

The gathering in northern Thailand is an interdenominational, international church.

On a recent Sunday, believers in Jesus from Korea, Ghana, Pakistan, China, Bangladesh,

the United States, the Philippines, and other countries came together

in a humble, thread-worn hotel conference room.

They sang, In Christ Alone, and I'm a child of God,

lyrics that were especially poignant in that setting. No one brings people together, like Jesus does.

He's been doing it from the start. In the first century, Antioch contained 18 different ethnic groups,

each living in its own part of the city. When believers first came to Antioch, they spread the word

about Jesus only among Jews. That wasn't God's plan for the church, however. Acts chapter 11 records that others soon came who began to speak to Greeks also,

telling them the good news about the Lord Jesus,

and a great number of people believed and turned to the Lord.

People in the city noticed that Jesus was healing centuries of animosity between Jews and Greeks,

and they declared this multi-ethnic church should be called Christians, or Little Christ's.

It can be challenging for us to reach across ethnic, social, and economic boundaries

to embrace those different from us.

But this difficulty is our opportunity.

If it wasn't hard, we wouldn't need Jesus to do it.

And few would notice we're following him.

Today's Our Daily Bread Devotional Scripture reading is from Acts Chapter 11, verses 19 through 26.

Now those who have been scattered by the persecution that broke out when Stephen was killed

...