Welcome to Dwell Daily

A Biblical Devotional for Spiritual Transformation

Overview
Over the past five years, more than a million people have recovered the ancient practice of listening to Scripture with the Dwell app. Our goal from the very beginning has been to help people, just like you, discover the transformative power of daily time with God in his Word.

And while we’ve built personalized ways for you to engage Scripture more deeply – from custom playlists and daily plans to intuitive tools that foster reflection and memorization. However, we’ve longed to enhance this experience with a communal expression of Dwell, creating a shared space for the entire Dwell community to immerse ourselves in Scripture together.

After many months of prayerful development and exploration, today we are thrilled to introduce you to the all-new Dwell Daily, a guided and interactive audio devotional that roots your day in the rich soil of Scripture.

For years we’ve offered a verse of the day, featuring many of the most beloved and significant passages of Scripture that point us to Christ and his Kingdom. You’ll still be able to listen to these passages, yet in addition to this, you are now invited to prayerfully linger in this passage, with a trusted guide faithfully leading you through the text and into a lived encounter with the Lord.

Trusted Guides for the Journey
Dwell Daily is spearheaded by our trusted team of Dwell Guides – faithful Christian leaders, including pastors, authors, spiritual directors, theologians, and counselors. While representing a diverse range of Christian traditions, they are united in their love for Scripture and belief that God meets us in and through his Word.

Each day, one of these guides will lead you on a short devotional journey, roughly five minutes in length. We’ll begin with a prayer and invitation to quiet our hearts and minds so we can hear from God. The guide will then read a few verses and offer a short devotional reflection on them, followed by what we’re calling a “response of the heart.” We want to invite you into this experience, not only as a listener, but as a participant. So, we may ask you to say a prayer as an act of faith, to meditate upon a specific truth in that day’s bible passage, or to silently listen for the Spirit’s leading. We’ll then close in prayer and leave you with a final word of blessing.

An Immersive Experience
Additionally, we’ve collaborated with a talented composer, Nathan De La Cruz, who has crafted an original score exclusively for Dwell Daily. This music ebbs and flows with the guide’s voice, creating an immersive listening experience, enveloping you in a rich soundscape unlike anything you’ve heard before!

By offering this daily experience, we are not seeking to replace other devotional habits you may keep or practices observed within your church community. Think of this as a compliment and companion, one that you can easily fit into your day whenever you need a few minutes to recenter on God in and through Scripture.

What’s Ahead?
While Dwell Daily lays the foundation, it’s just the beginning.

We’re excited to announce the upcoming expansion of our library of guided biblical content, featuring seasonal devotionals, biblical meditations, prayers, sleep experiences, and more, set to launch exclusively on the Dwell app in the coming months. We believe and pray that each of these will contribute in a meaningful way to the transformation of our lives into the life and likeness of Christ.

A Sneak Peek
Lastly, we’d love to share an example of a typical Dwell Daily guided experience. Simply tap play below as Viv leads you through a reflection on Isaiah 40. We hope it is a blessing to you, and encourage you to join us daily as we seek to Dwell with God in his Word.

Like what you hear? Dive into the app today and discover a new Dwell Daily experience, updated every day!

To try out the new listening player, download our newest release in the App Store. For our Android users, the new listening player is coming later this summer. If you happen to have automatic updates disabled on your device, you can come back to this page and tap here to update manually.

The Why Behind the Player Refresh

Just want the Cliffs Notes version of this post? Watch the video below.

For a good part of the spring, we’ve been hard at work redesigning arguably the most important screen in Dwell, the listening player. We began this project with a few goals in mind: 

1) A Return to Simplicity – Over the last five years, we’ve added a lot of exciting new features, such as Read Along, Read, Repeat and Reflect, etc. These new features, while making your experience with Dwell more robust and useful, have also caused the player itself to become more clunky. So we really wanted to streamline and simplify the UI where we could, making it easier for you to focus on what matters most. 

2) Digital Wellbeing – It’s important that Dwell be a digital space that’s life-giving to you. We want you to feel a sense of calm when you interact with the app, and nowhere is that more important than when you interact with the listening player. 

3) One Player for All – The new listening player design not only improves upon our classic Scripture listening experience, it paves the way for new guided biblical experiences, such as devotionals, meditations, and prayers, all coming to the app this fall. In fact, we have a sample of the new daily devotional coming to Dwell below that we’d love for you to hear!    

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What’s Changed

Streamlined Primary Player Options: Voice & Version and Background Music

We’ve consolidated the four UI elements that help you view and select your voice, version and background music into two, providing some much-needed breathing space at the bottom of the player. 

Things are just more intuitive now. Simply tap the new voice pill to switch voice or version of the Bible that you’re hearing. Likewise, tap the music pill to change the background music.

Built new Options screen to keep Dwell’s growing suite of controls in one place

We’ve consolidated all of the Listening and Read Along controls into a single screen giving you one place to make any and all adjustments as well as view which controls are “on” or “off” at a glance.

This consolidation of the Listening and Read Along options means that the Sleep Timer and Repeat buttons are no longer visible at the bottom of the screen, but they are just one tap away in the new Options area.

Made it a breeze to favorite and share Scripture

We’ve made it a lot easier for you to share and favorite the content you love. We’ve provided quick access to each action at the bottom of the listening player. With the release of Scriptural devotions, meditations, and prayers, this change will be even more beneficial for you.

Repositioned Title and Subtitle for easier viewing

We’ve relocated the title and subtitle near the bottom of the listening player so that your eyes no longer have to scan up and down the screen to view all of the relevant information about what you’re listening to. The comparision above makes it easier to see some of the other, smaller tweaks we’ve made to the player. For example, when Dynamic Background is turned on, the background color of the player is not as strong as it once was. We want this player to be enriching and have a sense of freshness when you come back to it to hear God’s word, but we don’t want it to be visually overpowering so that it becomes a distracting. We feel like we’ve arrived at a good balance.

Made the Scripture reference tappable

Related to that, we’ve made the Scripture reference, which is more often than not the subtitle of any piece of listening content, tappable. It will now pull up the corresponding chapter and book of the Bible, giving you quick navigation to another chapter within the book you’re listening to or access to all of the books of the Bible.

This means that we no longer need the books of the Bible button and is another example of us trying to simplify the screen for you, taking away everything that isn’t necessary, but no more.

Shrunk the artwork to allow the UI elements to better breathe

We’ve done a lot of work to remove visual friction to the listening player; one of the ways we’ve done this is by shrinking the artwork to allow for the other UI elements on the screen to breathe better. More margin, more padding, and more empty space makes for a more relaxed viewing experience. 

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Listen to a sample of the new daily devotional coming to Dwell

The really exciting thing about all of the work we’ve been doing on the new player, is that it helps pave the way for all of the new biblical content (devotionals, meditations, prayers, sleep experiences, etc.) that is coming to Dwell this fall. Listen to a sample of our new daily devotional experience that will be launching at the beginning of September. We hope you find it as life giving as we do.

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We hope this post has given you some helpful info on the new listening player. Please reach out with any questions or suggestions! Thanks again for supporting Dwell, and we look forward to continuing to serve you. ❤️

Warmly,
Team Dwell

We are thrilled to announce Amber (CSB) as the latest voice on Dwell!*

Amber is a Howard University alumni with a B.F.A in Theater Arts Administration. She is a voice over artist, voicing for the Smithsonian Institute, Dollar General, NYBG, and Hairfinity, just to name a few. She also voices the character of newscaster Mandy Perez of Sports Chat, and the character Alex from NAACP award winning writer and director JD Lawrence’s JD’s Place. Her motto: “I am a child of the most High, and I will expect nothing less but God’s best.”

Dwell: How do you best prepare to record the Bible? Is there something you do before you begin recording to get into a certain mindset?

Amber: I pray before I go into my studio, and ask God to not only give me the voice that ministers to the listener as I record, but to minister and reveal to me.

What drew you to join the Dwell project?

I said to myself, as I was listening to the Word, “It would be a blessing to narrate the Word.” And God allowed the journey to Dwell.

What is the biggest challenge of reading the entire Bible?

The names!

Was there anything about recording the Bible that surprised you?

A better understanding of some Scriptures of which I was unsure.

What is your favorite story or character in the Bible?

I have many, but I would say the story of Esther, and Jael is one of my favorite characters (bold and fearless!).

Do you have a favorite verse of Scripture?

Jeremiah 29:11. It’s also the reciprocal of my birthday.

What is one thing you’ve learned since you started recording the Scriptures?

That God is still revealing things.

Has being involved with this project changed your outlook on the Bible?

It’s all a blessing, and it has allowed me to spend more time with God.

Is there anything about this translation that has been special to you?

It has given me better clarity.

Is there something that you hope people will experience or gain from listening to your voice & CSB translation?

It’s my prayer that listeners will be drawn in through the emotion and intent of my narration, which I pray will then draw them closer to the Lord, deepen their understanding of Scripture, and for those on the fence, lead them toward salvation.

Is there anything else you’d like to share with our listeners?

Jesus is Lord and He loves you!

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Hear Amber read the CSB, available now on Dwell!

*New Testament currently available. Old Testament coming 2023.

Listen to Voice Previews Now

Those of us with kids spend a good chunk of our time in the car. According to research, around 7 hours a week. That figure surprised me until I began crunching the numbers on all the back and forth between school, church, soccer practice, piano lessons, and the other excursions I undertake with my own kids each week.

On average, parents spend about 7 hours a week in a vehicle with their kids.

OnePoll Study

As a parent, I’m eager to fill that time with good and beautiful experiences: good conversation and beautiful music, among other things. I’ve also longed to weave Scripture listening into those mini-van moments, but have found my own app, Dwell, to be less than ideal for my eight, six, and four-year olds.

Of course, I love Dwell, but my kids have a difficult time grasping the language of the ESV or NKJV. When we listen together I’ve noticed them tune out the adult narrators, assuming that “adult voices” equals “adult things.”

So for the last year, we’ve been asking ourselves a couple of questions:

1) Where can we find a version of the Bible that’s kid-friendly but also maintains fidelity to the original text?

2) And how can we keep kids engaged as they listen to it?

Today, we’re excited to announce our solution! We’re recording the International Children’s Bible (ICB) in kids’ voices. This will be the first-ever recording of the Bible narrated by children from all over the world.

We’ve partnered with the International Children’s Bible to create the first-ever recording of the Bible narrated by children from all over the world.

 

The ICB is an incredible resource for parents who want to immerse their kids in Scripture. Unlike many Bibles for kids, the ICB is a complete translation, based upon the original Hebrew and Greek and overseen by a team of trusted scholars, many of whom were involved with the NIV and NKJV. At the same time, it’s totally geared for children, translated at a third grade reading level, making it easier to understand, study, and memorize! And to hear the ICB actually narrated by children…it really brings the Scriptures to life!

We’re making great progress on the recording, and we’d like to introduce you to some of the newest kid voices coming to Dwell!*

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_{*Kids’ names and faces have been changed to protect their privacy.}

As wonderful as these five narrators are, we’re not stopping there! Our mission is to provide at least a dozen diverse and unique kids’ voices from all over the English speaking world. We’ll keep you posted as we find more!

Our hope is to have the New Testament released this holiday season; we’d love for it to be our gift to you, our subscribers! 🎁

As always, thanks for your continued support of Dwell! You make it possible for our small team to continue to bring projects like Dwell Kids to life. In the near future, parents, we’ll have a new resource in which to immerse our kids between piano and soccer practices (and beyond)!

 

We are blessed to have Russell Binns as the Dwell voice behind the New Living Translation. Russell is originally from London, England, and now makes his home in the southwest of the country, living near Bristol. As he wrapped up the NLT recording project, we sat down with Russell and asked him a series of “rapid fire” questions as a fun and simple way to get to know him better, and to invite him to share his love for Scripture with the Dwell community. Enjoy!

Dwell: How do you best prepare to record the Bible? Is there something you do before you begin recording to get into a certain mindset?

Russell: I say a short prayer to ask that I may do the reading to the best of my ability.

What drew you to join the Dwell project?

I had worked with the Dwell team previously on an audiobook called Humility, and was asked whether I’d be interested in reading the NLT. I regard it as a great privilege to do it.

What is the biggest challenge of reading the entire Bible?

It’s a marathon, so I find it best to take it steadily in small chunks, trying not to become intimidated by the length and setting short-term goals.

Was there anything about recording the Bible that surprised you?

How vivid stories and characters become when you go back to the source and read within the entire context.

What is your favorite story or character in the Bible?

I find St. Paul a truly extraordinary man.

Do you have a favorite verse of Scripture?

If I can choose a chapter, it would be 1 Corinthians 13.

What is one thing you’ve learned since you started recording the Scriptures?

A sense of perspective, which is important in these difficult times.

Has being involved with this project changed your outlook on the Bible?

I was always much more familiar with the New Testament than the Old, but I see now to what extent the Old Testament was crucial to Jesus and the Apostles.

Is there anything about this translation that has been special to you?

Archaic language, such as in the King James version, has its own special beauty, but the contemporary language of the NLT can strip away the centuries and bring one closer to the humanity of the characters in the Bible.

Is there something that you hope people will experience or gain from listening to your voice & NLT translation?

I hope that my work might bring people a little closer to the Word of God.

Is there anything else you’d like to share with our listeners?

Many millions around the world have suffered grief and loss in this terrible global pandemic, the worst in a century. I hope the Word of God can bring them hope and comfort, and that we will remember the Lord’s teachings and make a post-pandemic world a better, kinder place.

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Hear Russell read the NLT, available now on Dwell!

The work of translating the Bible is a serious undertaking and multi-layered effort.

Few of us fully appreciate the level of linguistic and textual scholarship required to put an English version of the Bible into our laps, or into the palm of our hands. At every turn, teams of translators are required to make decisions that bring us ever-closer to the ancient world of Scripture. There are countless poetic devices, cultural idioms, and points of reference that would have been immediately known to the original audience, yet are missed entirely by the contemporary reader.

In this way, the creation of any modern translation of the Bible is never as simple as swapping out a Hebrew or Greek word for an English equivalent. Even the most literal translations, commonly known as “formal-equivalence” versions of the Bible, still engage in the work of cultural translation.

In light of this, it is rare that a single translation can perfectly capture all of the nuance, beauty, and power of the original text. Each has its own strengths, and we encourage you to listen to several translations, as the fuller meaning of a passage is better grasped when we hear it in English from several perspectives.

This is one of the primary reasons Dwell deeply values adding new translations to the app, and today we are thrilled to add another: the New Living Translation.

The NLT is one of the most beloved and well-known English translations available today, holding together a commitment to rigorous biblical scholarship and the value of modern, everyday English. It is one of the only contemporary translations that combines a word-for-word and thought-for-thought method of translation, resulting in an accurate and impactful reading experience. That said, for us at Dwell, there is one feature of the NLT that we love most of all: it was written to be read aloud.

The NLT is the only contemporary Bible in English that keeps the listening experience at the heart of the translation process.

In addition to carefully putting pen to paper, the team of translators took time to read the new translations aloud to one another, revising and editing based on how natural the words sounded to the present-day ear, and whether or not they moved the heart to wonder and worship. As the introduction to the NLT says, it “is not only easy to understand but also has an emotive quality that will make an impact on listeners.”

In this way, the NLT embraces the biblical mandate to “focus on reading the Scriptures to the church” (1 Tim 4:13), and encourages us to join with Christians throughout the ages and not only read the Bible, but listen together as the family of God.

This initial launch of the NLT on Dwell includes the New Testament, Psalms, and Proverbs.