I fully agree with your idea that we should be serving God right now and not waiting to party later.to answer that, i guess we would have to come to agreement on which "death" matters to God; the spiritual one, meant to be accomplished "daily," or the other one that everyone suffers; bc this will alter the understanding of "resurrection" too i guess right. "Eternal" too.
well, i guess the spirit goes back to God, but the soul--which we usually conflate with the ego, right--who knows? The best test i know for a teacher is whether they are saying or implying that they know, when Scripture assures us that no one knows. "We do not know yet..."
but to reply another way, imo when you seek to please God right now, wherever you are at, you likely stop worrying about getting the part of you that was supposed to be dying a little more every day into some party with Jesus after death anyway; our egos cannot come, iow, whenever or wherever. So imo i would be deciding whether or not soul includes ego
As for the spirit, yes, the spirit goes to be with God, but we all have a spirit...it's the soul that makes us who we are. Our body is in the ground, but our spirit and soul must surely go to be with God -- if indeed we go right away, which I believe we do.
Some, dichotomists, believe the soul and spirit are one entity -- so that would work out too. I'm a trichotomist. I separate Body, Soul, Spirit.
It makes more sense.