I am excited that you decided to get started on Course One of the Preparing for Heaven: Building the Eternal Phase of Your Life curriculum.  It was previously titled the Getting Ready to Go Home to Heaven audio curriculum and sometimes will be called that, since the name change occurred after recording the podcasts.

First of all, let me, Dick Wulf, say that I want these audio files to be a personal conversation from me to you as if I were there with you.  Please don’t expect a professional presentation because  I am not an actor.  I have been a social worker and psychotherapist for over 50 years.

This material is more personal and too important to sound performed.  The podcasts were recorded in 2018 while I was on medication and having radiation treatments and doctors were pretty certain death was near.  So, you will hear me short of breath at times since the medication I was taking to slow down the cancer made me tired.  Some days of recording were harder than others.  Thank you for understanding.

Now, I am recording this in September 2019 and the cancer is in remission.  Perhaps a few years have gone by since then and I am in heaven by the time you listen to this.  If that is the case, I still want to be your friend and guide you into a more full life in heaven when you get there.

It is important that you not use these audio files just to learn.  Learning about faith does not go far enough to change you to be more like Jesus deep down in your spirit and prepare you for heaven.  Faith has to become a part of your thoughts, feelings and behaviors – in order to change your spirit.  Your thoughts, feelings, and actions, not your knowledge, reveal who you really are –  the nature of your spirit that goes to heaven.

This Preparing for Heaven: Building the Eternal Phase of Your Life curriculum will provide knowledge for you to use in changing the way you think, the way you feel, and the way you act.  In other words, it will help your spirit to change so that you can be more ready for heaven by being more like Jesus.

Growth of your spirit takes time and committed effort, just as building muscles at the gym or learning to play more difficult pieces on the piano.

Try hard to break the habit of listening once and hoping that will be enough to significantly change your spirit.  We have all become addicted to reading books to learn but not reading them over and over again until we have changed.

Since most people will be of the mind set to listen to all of the material once, listening every day for 70 days or just listening now and then, I will make this recommendation.  When you come to the podcast of a Together that you know you fall far short on, write it down to come back to it many times until you are a changed person.

What is probably the best is to listen to all of the podcasts, and then, beginning with Track 4, listen to an audio file 15 minutes a day for 3 to 7 days during one week before going on to the next.  That will have the best chance at changing your spirit for heaven.  Listen, meditate, and seek the Holy Spirit’s help on what to do to change your thinking, feeling and acting.  You will then be able to glorify God more because your spirit is more like Jesus – and you will have enhanced every day you will spend in heaven.

If you want to take this sanctifying process very seriously, read the material for each Together that is found at our other website, ChristiansTogether.org.  When you listen to a podcast, there is a link to the relevant article so you can consider that Together much more.

You will never exhaust the opportunity to change to be more like Jesus.  Remember, it is not you doing the work alone, God is at work conforming you to the image of His Son Jesus.

Each time you listen, allow the Holy Spirit to develop your spirit to be a little more like Jesus.  Search for some ways you need to think, feel and act differently – more like Jesus would think, feel and act.  If nothing comes to mind, ask the Lord to help you identify at least one specific thing to change in your thinking and emotions.  Ask those Christians with whom you are close and trust to help you.  And do with other Christians the specific Together about which you are listening.

Often you will learn how to change your spirit with regard to some aspect of Jesus’ spirit, but God will not immediately bring into your life a situation that creates the opportunity.  However, having listened and meditated about a Together of Scripture, you will more easily recognize when God presents to you the opportunity to obey and have your spirit transformed.

Jesus taught in parables how the kingdom of heaven is likened to something a person would sell all possessions to buy.  This time you will be spending will be to maximize your possession of the kingdom of heaven – piece by piece.  Think about how priceless it is to get yourself, your spirit, the deep part of who you are, ready for heaven.  You cannot hurry it – you must spend time listening and letting what you hear sink into your spirit.

Remember, you are doing this so that you can give more glory to God throughout all eternity and so that your forever experience in heaven is expanded.

You are about to start on Course One.  There are four courses to this curriculum in order to help you prepare for heaven using all 65 of the Togethers of Scripture.  This Course One focuses on those things we Christians are to do with one another with applications that even a believer confined to bed can do.

May God bless every minute you listen and meditate and act differently so that you grow to be more like Jesus and, thereby, prepare for heaven.