1) Pray strongly in tongues. Build your spirit man.
1 Corinthians 14:4 - "He that praises an unknown tongue builds himself"
Build and strengthen your spirit man. Strongly pray in tongues; also meditate, picture, and hold in your mind The truth: Christ is in me. Every time you arise in tongues, the spirit of God is arising within you. Christ is in you, a hope of the glory of God to shine on your life in the future. Arise, picture it: God is with me; leading me, guiding me. Put it in a picture form; hold it, meditate on what God says about this.
Then quieten yourself, and become still, so you can hear God speak. Intentionally stir yourself. Don't be so passive that you fall asleep. It just means you're stilling your thoughts and your mind, by focusing your attention on the Lord, with a desire to hear. Now, when the Holy Spirit speaks, its characteristics will be: 1) inside your spirit. 2) gentle, because He's gentle. 3) spontaneous. It's suddenly comes!
It's easily cut off, because He's gentle. If you won't listen, or get busy with something else, it all goes, just like that. Shuts off, like He stopped talking to you. You have to actually welcome when He's starting to speak and pour into your life, and start to give you something. It will be flowing as He speaks, and could come in a number of forms. How would you feel it? Well, when the Holy Spirit speaks to you, probably the primary way is you feel a peace.
Colossians 3:15 - "Let the peace of God rule your heart".
If you feel peace, He's leading you. If you feel agitated, something is causing your spirit to be alarmed; stop. He can lead you by putting a thought into your mind, suddenly in the middle of worship a thought comes; and it's a quickening thought. It's like it's a healthy, good thought. I should write it down before I forget it. Sometimes you'd be just maybe in prayer, and then a picture impression will come. It's gentle, spontaneous. It flows into your spirit, and comes up into your mind, and suddenly it's spontaneously there. You have an impression, you may feel agitated, you may feel peace about something. Often He just leads us through peace. If you're feeling at peace, and you've prayed about it, just move forward in what you plan; but if you're agitated, stop. If your wife is agitated, stop. Walk in unity, its better to have unity than to push on anyway. Maybe she's the Holy Ghost warning you.
It flows. It may just come as a stirring, you feel stirred to do something. You can be in the middle of a meeting, and someone's preaching, and you don't even remember what they're preaching about. All you know is you felt the stirring in your spirit, like a need to do this rose up out of nowhere - that's Holy Spirit leading.
What if I need guidance? Now we need guidance in lots of areas. You need guidance in marriage, you need guidance in business and work, faith. We need the Holy Ghost to help us all the time; so here's one of the simple things: when you come to Him, don't come with an agenda. If you come with an agenda, well I got what I want - now, confirm it for me. You're going to hear what you wanted. That's why a lot of people hear the wrong things. They thought they heard God, but actually, they heard what was in their own heart. It's called praying to God with an idol in your heart. You've already decided what you want. You set your mind on it. You can come to God asking him to guide you; or, I've made my decision now, bless it.
We find that as pastors, people come, and they tell me: I've decided to do this; and they've come to ask my opinion on it. I don't have any opinion on it. You've already decided, so no reason to have any opinion at all. You've made your decision. You're not coming for advice. You're wanting me to confirm your decision. I'm not willing to do that, and even God won't do that. If you've made your decision, go with it. Let's see how it works out. Then when it's not worked out too good, see if you'll have the humility to turn to me and ask where it went wrong. He'll take you back to where you had your strong self will, and you had this saying you're going to have it anyway, and you ask God to bless it. It doesn't work that way. If you want Him to bless things, just submit them to Him and say: it's ok, Lord one way or the other. I'm quite happy. However, this works out. Lord, I just come.