Me: There’s a couple different directions I could go from all the things we’ve talked about (in Part 1). Clearly you said that your wife said, before a certain point in time you were kind of hard to live with, but then you encountered this love. And so, it sounds like there’s been some radical changes in your life. And I don’t know if it’s possible to go into that a little bit more, if you want.

Bill: Sure. Okay. When you don’t know you are loved, you try to look for ways to be loved. You look for ways to be affirmed. You look for ways to achieve love. You look for ways to earn love. You try to do things. It’s like the story of Jesus being with Martha and Mary. Martha was so busy trying to please Jesus with her activity. She was driven to try to please Jesus through her service; where Mary just wanted to sit and listen and soak and receive from Jesus.

There’s this performance drive that lives on the inside of all of us. Until the Father makes his love real to us. Then, all of a sudden, you realize there’s absolutely nothing you can do, nothing you’ve ever done, or ever will be able to do, to be able to achieve, to earn, or deserve his love. He just loves. He just loves. He loves you unconditionally. So, we do a lot of things for a lot of the wrong reasons. Well, we do it for the right reasons, but they’re wrong in what we do.

I was very, very hard. I was a driven person, a performance driven person. So, I sought that in other people. I was very hard on Linda. I expected my wife to be a certain way and do certain things; it was very hard and difficult to live with. But when that happened to me – the realization was, there’s nothing I can do to achieve or perform. He just loves me. It blew me out of the water. For a couple of years, I had to reorient my whole way of seeing things because what was in me, that had been driving me, was gone. Now I was this person… all I wanted to do was spend time with him. From that place, fruit started to happen. I started to love people more.

There was a price that I paid because of that driven lifestyle, before that Father encounter. While raising my daughter, I was unemotional towards her. I was disconnected. I was non-relational. I was non-touchy feeling. So, she was raised by a man that was exactly like my dad, just un-relational. Well, after that encounter, all of a sudden, all I wanted to do is find ways to reach out, find ways to…. Matter of fact, I wrote a letter to her of apology, telling her that I hadn’t realized what I was like. She has kept that letter to this day. She lives with us here in Montana, along with her eight kids. We all live together. That could not have been possible before this encounter with the Father, because I was just a very, very hard person to live with.

 I’ll say this too. When your insides are unlocked from all the bondage emotionally, you have a season that you’re going to have to learn how to live in those new emotions because you’ve never experienced them before. So, there was a bit of a roller coaster while walking it out. But yet, I was always aware of his presence and his love for me as I walked through that. There’s been a lot of challenges since that time, since that encounter, but I’m not alone, ever. So, I hope that’s helpful.

Me: It’s beautiful. That’s very good. Thank you.

So, your daughter lives with you, along with eight kids. Wow! Do they do soaking prayer with you?

Bill: Some of the grandkids do. Yes, some of them do. They come out. There’s a couple of them that come out occasionally, some more regularly than the others. But yes, absolutely.

Me: How old are these kids?

Bill: The youngest is about 10 months and the oldest is 12.

Me: Okay. So, we have a real gamut of ages here.

Bill: Yes.

Me: And they’re on the young end for sure. So, how about that 12-year-old? Does the 12-year-old ever come?

Bill: She comes occasionally. She likes it probably more when we worship. We meet on Tuesday nights for soaking and sometimes for intercession. But we also meet on Saturday nights. That’s when we have worship and teaching.

Me: Very cool.

Bill: Well, know this, Mary, we built this building that we’re in right now. We built this when we moved to Montana. It’s strictly a house of prayer. For the last two and a half years, we’ve had nothing but worship going on 24/7 inside here. We meet here and God’s just so good. His presence is so wonderful!

Me: I remember, before you moved, you talked about wanting to build that place.

Bill: Or something like it, because churches for the most part, always lack room. Most church buildings are multiuse. I just wanted a place that was strictly his, where his presence could be here. There wouldn’t necessarily be socials here. It’s a place of his presence.

It always was a dream of mine. When we moved here, there was a concrete slab on the ground. I didn’t know what to do with it. So, I started asking the Lord about it. Two years later, we’ve got this building that houses the presence of the Lord. It’s amazing actually.

Me: Did you build it?

Bill: I put about 60% of the work into it. I had about 40% assistance and help from others that actually knew what they were doing. And it took two years.

Me: That’s good.

Bill: Yep.

Well, going back to the soaking topic, or experiencing God; let’s just call it that. Back to the experiencing God side of things. If you were to talk to someone, it doesn’t matter their age, young or older people who have never experienced God; they’ve heard about him, but they haven’t really met him, or not very deeply anyway. Say they’re hungry for that. What would you tell a person like that to do, in order to position themselves to encounter God, to experience God?

Bill: Well, I know for me because I’m wired towards physical touch… I would say, seek out people who do the presence of the Lord, or ministries that carry the presence of the Lord. For most people, their first encounters with the presence (I’m not saying all people but for most); their encounters with the presence of the Lord happen during worship. They’ll go to a service, or a meeting, and they’ll feel something that they know is not them. Some people call it goosebumps. Other people, experience different signals of God’s presence.

Out of your belly shall flow rivers of living water, the Bible says. A lot of times you’ll feel peace deep on the inside of you. Part of it is recognizing his presence. Always presence is related to peace. You can’t have his presence without peace. That’s a real safe understanding of the presence of God.

When I started to feel his presence on the inside of me…. Now people sometimes struggle with that word feel. I guess you got to get over it. We are created with spirit, soul, and body. Every part of us was God’s idea. And so, you and I were meant to experience the presence of God.

Part of it is building a faith that believes it is the will of God for you to experience God. There’s a lot of things that I could share from the word that can help facilitate that, but we’re limited in time. The key, I think, is something I remember F.F. Bosworth saying, “Faith begins where the will of God is known.”

 You must first believe that God really wants you to experience him. We have a book that we give out everywhere we go. It’s all about experiencing him. My wife, also, wrote a book on learning how to experience God. There are areas of intimacy where simple little practical tools to learn how to experience God can be helpful. He wants so badly to talk to each one of us. Matter of fact, he’s always talking to us, but we’ve just not turned the dial on the tuner to be able to hear because, in general, initially we don’t really believe the God of universe wants to talk to us. We think, “Why would he want to spend time with me?”

A lot of things that have happened in my life have occurred because of encounters with God. It’s where I’ve experienced something significant that changed everything. And so, I encourage people initially, to go places, and be with people that carry a heart to experience God’s presence. A corporate gathering is typically where people will experience him for the first time. That doesn’t limit him to only that, but it does help folks who want to learn how to experience God.

Think of the Bible. We always say, “What is the Bible? It’s the word of God.” And that is true. But if you look at it, the Bible is a bunch of stories about people experiencing God. It is all about experiencing him. And I think once you’ve tasted and seen that the Lord is good, something on the inside of you won’t let go….

Me: Bill, do you happen to have the titles, or even the book itself that you could put up to the camera? (He holds it up.)

The title reads, “Always Loved; You are God’s Treasure, not His Project.” The author is Brent Lokker.

Bill: That’s our favorite book. We give that away everywhere. This is my wife’s book. (He holds it up.)

Me: “Intimate Life Lessons,” by Linda Boone. Can people order those on Amazon if they want?

Bill: Probably not “Intimate Life Lessons.” You have to go to our website for that, which is encounterhislove.com.

Me: Didn’t even know you had a website. That’s great!

Bill: Yeah. You can order it there. I’ll package it up and send it out, for that particular book. Yeah. Like I said, I’m probably going to box up a bunch of books for you, so you can give some to your Nepali friends and so you can have some.

Me: That’s very generous. Thank you.

Well, we were talking about how people can experience God through their love language, and you said probably your top love language is feeling. Do you have any examples of what it’s like for somebody with a different love language to experience God?

Bill: Well, if you describe the five love languages, you’ve got: gifts, words of affirmation, quality time, physical touch, and acts of service. Obviously with physical touch, it’s my sense of feel of the presence of God. It took me a while to realize, when I felt the presence of the Lord, that was him loving me. The simplicity of that.  When I sense and feel that presence, not just read about it scripturally. I can quote the scripture, “He’ll never leave me or forsake me,” but to actually feel and experience that presence: it’s him loving me.

It’s not hard to see his love. You can use the experience of Jesus at his baptism as an example. There you can see aspects of those five love languages.  What did the Father say to the Son? “You are my Son in whom I’m well pleased.” He then had the Holy Spirit come on him as a dove. Jesus felt something. He heard something.  Those were keys, I believe, to set the pace for his ministry.

Jesus had to hear that. It wasn’t about ministry. He loves him. It wasn’t about ministry when Jesus experienced his Father’s presence. It was about the fact, that’s how the Father felt about his Son. The words “beloved son” means to be loved. So, you can see some of those kinds of things. That’s affirmation, hearing the words, the words of affirmation.

Me: I’m just thinking about the dove descending. It’s an example of the gift-giving love language. The Father spoke an encouraging word.

Bill: Yeah. But also, Jesus felt that presence, and so there’s touch in there.

I have another teaching, when it comes to our basic needs as human beings, that fits even more readily into that whole relationship Jesus had with the father, that we see exampled in the in the baptism. I think it was Bill Johnson who said perfect theology is Jesus. Look at Jesus’s life. You want to know what perfect theology is? Look at his life. You can get pretty much every pattern that exists by looking at the life of Jesus.

This is a primary thing: many are focused so much on Jesus (which is a good thing) but who did Jesus focus on? If you look at the New Testament, the Father. Jesus didn’t come to reveal Jesus’s will. Jesus came to reveal the Father, the will of the Father, to show what the Father was like. And so, the destination, as it says in John 14, “I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” And later Phillip is saying, “Show us the father and it’ll be good enough for us.” But really, Jesus is going, “Phillip, Phillip, dude, when you’ve seen me, you’ve seen the Father.” So, the essence of this whole thing that we’re walking is, Jesus never meant for you just to focus in on him. He meant for you to see who the Father was like, what he’s like, and how crazy he is about who you are. So that you could be the son or the daughter that he wants you to become. But that only comes by knowing and hearing and understanding his love.

So, endeavoring to come into a place, like I said, a lot of it’s keyed to being around people who carry his presence and his love. We were never meant to walk alone. We’re to be fathered and mothered in the kingdom. You know, finding those people who will actually disciple us and walk with us, and father and mother us into the things of God.

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Copyright 2025

Link to Part 1: https://firestarterforjesus.com/2025/11/18/experiencing-the-fathers-love-with-bill-boone-part-1-crisis-encounters/

Link to Bil Boone’s website: https://www.encounterhislove.com/