“For evangelical Christians, what one believes is more important than how one lives.”
Living “right” will definitely make your life more enjoyable, but it won’t get you a centimater closer to salvation. Conversely, admitting you’re lost and trusting (believing) in God’s saving grace is the ONLY path to salvation. Works will follow. More with some than with others.
Works are not what saves, but salvation will result in a modification of your life. If you are concerned that your actions are risking your salvation, you’re doing it wrong.
Yes, it is faith that saves, and that even comes “by grace” in that it is a gift, so no one can boast. But in being reconciled to God, we come to see sin for what it actually is, rather than how we too often see it, as Satan wants us to - harmless, unavoidable, our choice, even enjoyable and “good.” Evil becomes good. But in becoming new creatures in Christ, if we have, then sin grieves us as it does God, and our concern then is not wanting to grieve Him and harm others and ourselves by doing it.