I really think that you misunderstand my position. Saying the words doesn't do anything for your soul. God does not indulge in magic.
You have to accept Christ as Savior, but then you have to follow Him. Not for salvation's sake, that you now already have, but for love of God, because He commanded.
Failure to do so will not cost you your salvation. You do need to repent, but confessing to a priest is not necessary. As Christians, we are our own priests, and Jesus is our High Priest, the ONLY mediator between God and man.
You may slip and stumble and commit grievous sins, but your salvation is not lost. Yet you still need to repent of them. If you, say, go from being a choirboy to a gangsta, sell drugs, rob, rape, and murder people, or from a choirgirl to, say, a super rock star, and do drugs, fornicate wildly, marry 4 husbands; then in these cases were you truly saved as a choirboy/girl.
If you had died then, instead of going on to live a life of sin, would you have gone to heaven? Only god can judge the heart and soul, but my guess would be NO. You were not truly saved.
If on your deathbed, you repented and turned to God, would you be saved? Yes, and that is not a guess. Even Hitler could have done it, although I doubt that he did.
But the question is, was this the first time You accepted God, or did God extend your life long enough for an already saved person to come back to Him?
I don't know, and neither do you. What we both know is what our church teaches about this. But I don't consider this a doctrine essential to salvation, just one that is about salvation, so I am prepared to be wrong about it.
Either way, I will make it to heaven, and while only God can judge the soul, I assume that you will, too. When we get there, we'll know.
And Lot was called *righteous Lot*.
Hardly a term I would apply to a man who lived like he did, and yet God called him *righteous*.
David, who committed adultery and then have the woman’s husband murdered to try to cover up the sin, was still called *a man after God’s own heart*.
Yes, God demands perfection from us. No, we are not able to meet it.
That’s why Christ’s righteousness is imputed to us, so that when God sees us, He sees the righteousness of Christ on us, that perfection that He demands.
THAT is why we will not gain and lose our salvation on a minute by minute basis. If it were up to us, no one would make it. Thank God that it is HE who works in us to will and to do according to His good pleasure.
THAT is God’s grace which saves us.