The religious reveal something very dark about themselves if they contend the existence of God or the afterlife is behind their moral agenda.
A good many of the wise guys [Mafia] are religious Catholics that did not seem to keep them on the straight and narrow. And then there are the pedophile priests. It did not stop them from exercising their sexual habits. Religion is at times a mask that hides truth.
I have come to the belief that fear of a pleasurable life because of a perfect afterlife came from early Catholocisms necessary rejection of Epicurean philosophy.
If you read Paul's letters he hates all over the modern da Epicureans (and Stoics) and has to trump them with a system superior to thiers.
He does so by inviting original sin and the need for grace. I do believe that this is a necessary condition to transcend your mortal existence - but I think hedonism got a really bad rap in the meantime.
I have yet to have it explained to me sufficiently how Christians would know they were doing good - unless it felt good (hedonism).
So - to answer your question, I live my life now with what maximizes my happiness. Part of that maximization seems to be really good for my soul. I think a maximally happy mortal life prepares you and entails a maximally happy afterlife.
So if that means I have melded Epicureanism and Christianity in some odd way - so be it. Like Aquinas said - were truth be found - there is God.
By the way - I think Hell, the devil, and evil are entirely contradictory to the rest of God's attributes. I reject not only a natural evil - but ethical evil. I think this world is a mere gradiation of good.
TTF
