No app

Over the coming months I will share some of my favorite Bible apps. But first I want to share a non-app. This year my wife and my colleague John Sacson have inspired me to read through the Bible the “old fashioned” way. I have a physical study Bible that she bought for me about ten years ago. I decided to read through it in a year. I’m not going to quite make it through in a year, but I’m enjoying the overview. I just read the text, not the footnotes. I’ve chosen different colors for different themes related to the heart and I’m highlighting them: joy, mourning, wisdom, prayer, and the heart itself. I’ve had to let go of some of my desire for order so that I can just focus on the text and let God speak through his Word. So if I misplace my highlighters, I don’t force myself to go back to the chapters gone by.

 

My study Bible

I really enjoy having a physical book in my hands, or laid out on the rug in front of me. I can easily look forwards and backwards as I read. After learning many ways to study the Bible, I’m not actually studying it this year. I just read it out loud. I’ve never done that before and I find that I like it. The emotion comes out and I find I slow down and listen better. There are some parts that are a bit shocking and I find I am reading in a whisper because the Bible sometimes tells stories that are violent or even shameful to say out loud.

Printed Bibles in many Nigerian languages are fairly accessible, though some still can not afford Bibles, especially in languages that fewer people speak, as these tend to be a little more expensive to print. Please join me for thanking God for availability to so many of the sweet printed Word, and pray that printed Bibles will be available in all the languages that his people want them here.

How do you like to read your Bible? I’d love to hear from you. The more I hear from you all, I can make this less about me and more about God and how we meet him in his Word together!

I’ve heard some people completely switch off their phone or keep it in another room when they are praying. Before I read the Bible, I use my phone for Scripture memory flashcards, so I use a different approach. I have an automatic feature that puts my phone into a focus mode during my prayer time. I’ll share about that in my next post.

Dancing the Word

I gripped my chair on the front row of the event hall while Adam and Eve reveled in the glory of God and then hid from his thunderous steps.  When the Red Sea parted, I wanted to gather myself up and join them in their victory.  The experience of dancing the Word with the 35 dancers and actors that choreographed the 40 minute drama/musical and acted the life-changing story of the Gospel from Genesis to Jesus awakened a fervor to go and share and be part of the continuing story of Jesus calling humanity to back to Eden.  We are invited back to sweet fellowship and walking with our Creator! 

 

 This group of young people are not only gifted dancers, they invited me into there community and welcomed discipleship with humility and joy. "I have always wanted to follow Jesus," one of them shared, "but I have not known how until now."  Nigeria has a history of rich faith and spirituality.  Yet many artists are wondering what following Jesus looks like for them and not are not finding  a platform to minister in the gifting that pulsate with the rhythms around them.  This unique opportunity to savor the sweetness of Jesus together, get away from the city, sit with Him, and embody the Word was transformative for us all. 

 Please pray for these treasured souls as they discover what it looks like to follow Jesus in his Way while still making their way as artists.  

My favorite Bible apps

I love Bible apps! I have heard a lot of compelling sermons and read convincing reasons to set my phone aside each morning and go back to the technology of pen and paper. However, there are also good reasons to use a smart phone as I encounter God. I have been using a smart phone as my primary tool for engaging with God’s Word for the past few years, and along the way I’ve developed some favorite apps. Although they each have unique features, there are some common themes that make Bible apps helpful.

Bible apps are as portable as a pocket new Testament, but as powerful as a whole library. I find that I want to reference a specific Bible verse from time to time, and I can just pull out my Bible. In our office we read a chapter of the Bible every Wednesday and Thursday. With our growing organization there are not enough printed Bibles in the center table any more, but everyone has a Bible in their pocket. Sometimes I can’t quite remember a reference, but I can easily search for a reference on my phone.

A whole library in my pocket over the years

Many Bible apps synchronize to online storage. When I was growing up, I journaled a lot, with about eight full journals filled with my thoughts and ideas (and very few feelings or dreams if any recorded). As I transitioned to college I started journaling my prayers. When I moved to Nigeria, I continued prayer journaling intermittently for about six years, but slowly discovered that going back and forth “across the pond” with a growing set of journals could become quite cumbersome. I wanted to be able to go back through my journals, reviewing answered prayers and remembering Scriptures God had brought to my heart in previous seasons. But putting journals in carry on-luggage poses a risk of loss, not to mention the increasing cost of the weight. Online Bible apps provide a secure place to keep not only my journals, but my Bible memory flash cards, my notes and highlights, and my creative doodling. 

Bible apps’ audio and video features can also give them an edge over printed Bibles. A printed Bible can’t read to you, and a friend isn’t always available to do that. Whether it is listening to a chapter of the Bible or memorizing Scripture, I find the speaker on my phone opens up new possibilities for Bible apps. I’ll share about some of my favorite apps and their features one-by-one over the coming weeks. All the Bible Apps I use are free, sponsored by people who want to share the sweetness of God’s Word with others. However, one of the most important features for studying God’s word on the phone is not an app and it is not just for the Bible. It is a common feature that helps turn off the distractions. And there is an even lower tech way to focus on the Bible.

I’ll share about those in my next two posts. Can you join me in praying that many people in Nigeria and around the world will learn how to use their phone (and when not to use it) to study the Word? Also, as I share these features, can you prayerfully consider who might need to know about these? Perhaps even immigrant neighbors who you are not yet close to? Although my blogs focus on my own experience and Nigerian languages, these same apps are used around the world and are loaded with thousands of languages worldwide!

 

Why not include everyone?

Have you ever stopped to wonder if everyone in the room actually understands what is being said? In multilingual countries like Nigeria, we often use English as a default, assuming that because people aren't complaining, they must be following along. But this is a dangerous assumption. Back in April 2019, during research in a village between Jos and Abuja, a team member told an engaging Bible story in Hausa to a group of children. They seemed to understand, but only two or three actually answered her questions. However, when a young man retold the same story in their local language, Berom, the gathered children completely transformed. Suddenly, every single child was jumping up, waving their hands, and answering the questions perfectly. They didn't just hear the words; they finally understood them. (To learn more, read the original blog posts:They Just Looked At Me and Margin… gone)

 

Right now, parts of the Bible have been translated into 305 of the 495 living Nigerian languages, including 110 languages with at least the New Testament. See how God has been honored through hundreds of lives dedicated to this huge work! Although the New Testament has been translated into only 56% of Nigerian’s languages, due to these being high-population languages, more than 93% of the people in Nigeria have access to Scripture in their heritage tongue (see Figures). Praise God for this opportunity! Yet, in the vast majority of local churches, English or regional languages dominate. A study of twenty-eight local languages showed that in only three of them was the mother-tongue Scripture actually used regularly in church services. When we pray for the Word of God to take root, we must also pray for the barriers of "prestige" languages to fall. When the New Testament was written, the early apostles didn't preserve it in Aramaic—the native language of Jesus Himself. Instead, they wrote in common Greek because it was the everyday language that the rapidly expanding, diverse church actually understood. If the early Church prioritized the comprehension of the listeners over the language of its founder, why should we expect our brothers and sisters today to grow spiritually in a language they struggle to comprehend?

Figures: Bible translation in Nigeria by language (blue) and population (orange) 

This exclusion goes beyond the church pews; it is severely affecting our children's education. Historically, children in Nigeria have been punished or shamed for speaking their mother tongues at school, turning education into a stressful leap into the unknown. For years, a national policy supported teaching young children in their native languages first. The Obolo community took advantage of this and launched the Obolo Bilingual Education Programme. By teaching children in their mother tongue, Obolo, while gradually introducing English, the program achieved world-renowned success. Sadly, the Ministry of Education reversed this policy in late 2025, making English the sole language of instruction. Although the change was well-intentioned for better education, it could close the door for many Nigerian students. We must lift up these children in prayer, asking that they will not be locked out of learning the basic skills they need to thrive.

Language is also a matter of daily survival and human dignity. Imagine receiving a medical diagnosis or treatment instructions that you cannot understand. Crucial, lifesaving health booklets on waterborne diseases, malaria, and hygiene are available digitally in over a thousand languages, yet they rarely reach the rural clinics where they are desperately needed. Furthermore, in areas of Nigeria deeply scarred by terrorism and kidnapping, local-language trauma healing programs are proving to be powerful tools for restoration. When people hear the healing promises of God's Word wrapped in the very language they use to grieve, the depth of forgiveness and recovery is profound.

Please join us in bringing these matters before the Lord. Pray that denominational leaders will have the courage and creativity to introduce local-language Scriptures—including audio and video forms—into their weekly services. Pray for policy changes in our education system so children can once again learn freely in the languages they speak at home. And finally, pray that God will provide the volunteers to translate and distribute native-language health and trauma healing booklets to the most vulnerable. Let us work and pray together so that every tribe and tongue in Nigeria can know God deeply, learn freely, and live with the full dignity they deserve.

This blog is based on an academic advocacy paper presented at the Nasarawa State University on July 14, 2026. Please contact Zach if you would like to read the original paper.

God Watching

 I sat in my van heading out of our driveway, car stopped, bird poster on my lap that I had scrambled to retrieve and eagerly observed beaks, feather colors, and tails.  One little village weaver caught a bug right in front of my windshield as I clapped and smiled like a child seeing a magic trick for the first time.  I was mesmerized. 

I have always thought it was sweet, and a bit odd, watching people walk around with binoculars in hand trying to see evasive birds.  A bit of a waste of energy when so much of God’s creation you can get up close to, like a spider web, or treasure from a distance, like a red African sunset.  I don’t know what sparked it, but I decided we were going to study the birds around us in school.  I got mini posters printed for each child, and we made a wall graph in our classroom to chart what birds we’ve seen.  We went to the bird reserve at 6am and 7:30 two different days in the same week.  One day we sat outside eating our lunch under the mango trees, and a blue flycatcher landed on the branch above us.  Acacia said, “Mommy, see that bird!” How many lunches have we eaten under those trees, oblivious to the birds.  Now, we see them everywhere.  I drive down the road, and a bird fliess in front of me, and I want to know what kind it is, what it eats, where it lands.  My children call out from their desks, window seat, and come running in the house to tell me about the birds they saw. I hear a bird call outside and I rush to the window to see who that beautiful voice belongs too. 

"See the birds of the air, they do not sow nor reap nor store up in barns, but your heavenly father feeds them." (Matthew 6:26) Hmmm, yes indeed. Jesus pointed people to the birds too.  But not for the sake of bird watching, but of God watching. "Fix your eyes on things above, not on earthly things." (Hebrews 12:12)  Have you ever had the experience that you read a verse in the quiet hours of the morning, and your heart clings to it, and then, all day, it applies to everything? We are now noticing the birds because we have decided to fix our eyes on them.  We have decided to know their various characteristics and names.

There is a hamerkop nest is behind us in the tree to the left.

  God invites us to do that with him, and then...to see him everywhere.  At work in the big and little, our God wants us to focus our attention on him because that is where we will find hope in a dark world, life and victory when defeat feels inevitable, and joy in the ordinary.  

 Now I'm one of those sweet, odd people who reaches for my binoculars every other minute while I walk along outside.  I also pray I'm that kind of person when I see God at work, recognizing and delighting in him, longing to get a closer look at his beauty.  

So Far From Home

I bought apples.  

This doesn't sound like a big deal, but I only buy apples, shipped here from South Africa, on special occasions and yesterday was one of those.  Lydia, who had spent two nights in the hospital, was coming home. 

Today, as I was cutting the apples, my mind flashed to mini me climbing the side of a tall wooden hay wagon as it passed under the apple trees in an overgrown orchard on our farm in Upstate New York. Then, unbidden, came memories of apple picking through the years. New York crisp autumn days, then in college with friends in Michigan, later with Mariama toddling behind me picking the soft ones off the ground, then pregnant with twins, pulling Mariama and Lydia in a wagon.  I thought, "I'm so far from home."  Those memories don't really make "home," but the joy of apple picking, a natural, sweet excursion with those you love, and promises of treats to come, is a delight that has echoes of home.  

Carrying the apples to my children, I looked around my house here in Nigeria, and the sense of being distant drifted as I knew that I AM home, building new memories with people I love.  We have mangoes hanging green, promising smoothies and sticky chins.  We have passion fruit flowers, their purple centers and delicate frilly white flowers, speaking of sticky, sweet yumminess sucked out through holes bitten by an eager child's little teeth. I hear exuberant shouts daily with the count of eggs that our new quail have laid that my children have collected and are running into the house to show me their camouflaged treasures. 

 

 All of this reflection reminded me that we are only ever as close or far away from home as we are close or far away from Jesus and the sweetness we experience in following him where he leads us. Following him leads each of us to worlds where we have echoes of eternity because he's there, bringing beauty even in pain, loss, and disappointment. Sometimes we experience the undeniable beauty through the evidences of himself he's left in a child's giggle or a setting African sun. 

 It brings a song to my heart sung by folksy, pop artist Josiah Queen (if you haven't listened to his songs before, you can start here): 

Hold on, wait a minute
I don't want what You ain't in, and
I don't wanna go unless I'm going there with You
It's You there, rain or shining
You're the sun on my horizons
You are my everything.   

My promised land is you. 

Home is defined by being with Jesus, so I'm never far away because, "I will never leave you or forsake you," and "I am with you always, even to the end of the age," were some of the last words he spoke to his disciples.  May we each experience the sweetness of "home" with him as we follow him where he leads.  And may he fill our aching loneliness for simpler, happier spaces where we found comfort in mother's arms or pleasure in our feet pressed into green grass or the exhilaration of taking off your soccer cleates after a match well played. 

May he draw our gaze toward the beauty in our midst that speaks of...himself...our promised land.

CV and Such

 I shout "I’ve been driving for 24 years!" 

When the recently-graduated-from-diapers 

Guard placed his hand 

Through the window of my Van

On my steering wheel 

To help me reverse, for real? 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Masters in Scripture Engagement

On the border of enragement

Why don’t they ask for my help? 

I stumble in the emotional kelp. 

Tying me up, as I want to prove 

I am not one to remove 

From the complicated equation 

Of a community engagin’ 

with Scripture

“I studied education"

So I have the qualification

See my kids are phenomenal 

Their minds and hearts full

Also studied the arts for kids

Hence the drama of the life cycle of aphids

Studied appropriate technologies

Agriculture n small animal husbandries

That’s where my yard looks likes mini model,

And the start-up petting zoo, minus the cattle. 

I’ve lived in West Africa for ‘bout 20 years, 

Learned Spanish, French, and Hausa in tears. 

Started an organization to help the less fortunate, 

Hundreds of kids on their academic journey set. 

I’ve written smashing musicals and plays, 

Invested selflessly on hot African days, 

Gone without water and electricity

All for the gospel, chosen simplicity. 

I can boast and I can brag, 

Give my self a nice hash-tag

But if all they see is me and what I do. 

If it does not bring joy to You, 

Jesus, I lay it down and call it for what it is. 

A wild flower, fading, Dr. P's vanishing fizz

I could write a lengthy CV

‘Bout my accomplishments and degree

Yet one thing is resoundingly true

It’s all rubbish compared to knowing you.