Some of you who've come this far in the text may be thinking, "Alright, I can believe all of this. God exists, Jesus exists, and he's the one and only Son of God. I've believed that (more or less) my whole life. What's the big deal?"
The big deal is this: believing something in your head is much different than believing something in your heart and acting on it. I'm pretty sure your employers are not be satisfied with your merely recognizing their existence. They expect you to recognize their authority. They expect you to obey management directives and accept appropriate discipline when objectives are not met. Failure to submit to these policies is grounds for dismissal.
And so it is with God. To simply admit that God is real may require faith. But, to accept his authority over you requires what we call saving faith. To extend our employment analogy (maybe even torture it a little), God won't hire anyone without such a pledge of loyalty and obedience. It requires trusting that God has the right to expect a certain type of behavior from you, and that he has the right to use the circumstances of your life to guide you into those behaviors. What we're talking about here is (shudder) submission, placing God's will above your own. He started, owns, and operates the business, and deserves our best efforts.
Here in the U.S., we don't like to accept authority over our private lives. It's a proud tradition -- "Live Free or Die". We don't like the idea of having a King, a Lord. We don't want anyone or anything to intrude on our autonomy, not our government, not our employers, not our clergy, not even our parents. There are many, many people who say they believe in God -- Father, Son, and Holy Spirit -- but give very little thought to obedience. Worse, a large number of those people profess to be Christians, and many of them really are, in a vague, non-binding, cultural sense. Most can name the church that they're staying home from, at least. But, it is the height of rudeness in this society to suggest to someone that they need to examine and adjust their behavior in accordance with their avowed religious principles. That's just liable to start people quoting parts of the Bible ("Judge not .."; "Let he who is without sin .."; "Take the log out of your own eye ..") that they don't understand.
I'm not trying to reduce Christianity to a series of do's and don'ts or simple compliance with a church hierarchy. That sort of thinking has contributed to the existence of a complementary problem. While some people refuse to submit to God's authority, others try to substitute strict religious observance for faith and reliance on God. Yes, personal holiness is important, but you don't become "holy" by following rules. You become holy by appropriating the holiness of Jesus. Obedience is the product of faith, not the producer.