While I can appreciate your sincerity ... your blindness to the text of the Bible is the real issue here.
How do works relate to salvation? The Biblical relationship is clear from the Ephesians passage, they come after salvation and they are in response to what Christ has already done.
Your approach places your works before salvation, and in such a fashion that you never know if you have done enough to get there. You cling to a false hope that at worst you will have to spend a few years working off some of your sins in purgetory because you just didnt do enough good deeds.
The truth is your approach to works is executed out of selfishness ... you have to do them to maximize your chances of getting into heaven. The Biblical approach has our works after salvation so that we can walk in them with the freedom that salvation brings. If you are constantly doing good works to make sure you get there, you are doing them for YOUR benefit, whether you admit it or not ... doesnt matter. You are unable to unselfishly walk in works if you must do them for your salvation.
"He saved us, not by deeds done by us in righteousness, but in virtue of His own mercy ... by the washing of regeneration ... " Titus 3.5
The Ephesians passage sets forth the proper basis of salvation and works. Salvation is a gift of God (it is not earned or deserved) received by faith; nothing to do with works. After receiving this gift we are then capable of walking in the works that God has prepared for us to walk in ... and we can walk in them without selfish motives, without any sense that we are building up brownie points to make our "works scale" tip in our favor.
In addition ... not only does the Bible teach that salvation is through faith alone, it also clearly teaches that you can KNOW that you have eternal life ... something that adherence to your works-righteousness approach can never give you.
"I write these things to you, who believe in the name of the Son of God, that you may know that you have eternal life." 1 John 5:13
Ephesians 2:5-10 does not teach faith alone: it mentions grace being the sole source of both faith and good works. It does mention that grace does not come of our works, but right alongside it the letter mentions good works and says that they are obligatory. Eph. 2, like any other passage from the Bible expresses the Catholic teaching; tihs partiocular passage also, liek many others, contradicts the Protestant teaching.
Likewise Titus 3, if you only look at verse 5, says something from which one could infer that we are saved through faith alone. However, the entire passage begins by exhorting people to good works, and then says plainly: “they, who believe in God, may be careful to excel in good works”.
And this is the case witrh all Protestant prooftexts: they do not say what you try to make then sound like, and examining of the context yields the Catholic teaching. There are many passages that praise faith and teach that faith saves, — but there are also many passages that praise good works. When a passage directly explains how we are saved, — such as Matthew 25:31-46 or Luke 18:18-30, — the bible explains that we are saved by our good works, — but of course, not by works alone.
What of this Protestant theory that works merely show faith? The Bible never says anything like that either. In fact, were that the case, the innumerable exhortations to good works which we read toward the end of virtually every Pauline letter, or in Eph 2:10, or Titus 3:8, already cited, or in Matthew 25, or in the Sermon on the Mount, — would make no sense. “[W]ith fear and trembling work out your salvation. For it is God who worketh in you, both to will and to accomplish, according to his good will” (Phil 2:12f). If faith produced our works in us without the involvement of our will, why fear and why tremble?
Here is where the Protestantism has a bridge to authentic Christianity, and the key to it is in the passage like 1 John 5:13, which you cite last. It is true, and the Catholic Church teaches accordingly, that true well-formed faith comes with good works. One who reads the exhortations to good works, and believes that “he heareth us whatsoever we ask” (v 15), that “the things that are impossible with men, are possible with God” (Luke 18:27), — he has a well formed faith and that faith will help him choose works of righteousness. But that is not faith alone: it is faith and good works together that save us. Well formed Catholic faith indeed gives us an assurance of salvation; but works are a part of the process of sanctification. Just like the letter of James says, “by works a man is justified; and not by faith only”.