I get my understanding of Faith applied from the Greek Scriptures, you get yours from the translated English Scriptures.
You get your biased understanding of Faith from a teacher who has a theology degree from Stanford.
Second, pisteuo correctly defined is three specific things, that together communicate what saving Faith is.
1) a personal surrender to Him.
2) a belief that He will accept, guide, maintain, and complete the surrendered life.
3) sustained by confidence. Which means we make all of our hundreds of daily decisions based on the fact our lives are nolonger our, but His now.
Now, I've been taught for over 33 years by a teacher who has a Theology degree from Stanford, able to read and translate any ancient text, and ownes the largest collection of Biblical manuscripts in private hands behind the Vatican. I'm not going to give you pearls that you don't want just to trample all over them. You need to start with fulfilling pisteuo correctly!
The Greek doesn't allow work and effort to be separated from pisteuo. Only the people who have built their understanding on the mistranslated words believe, believer, and believing cry works salvation. And I'm proving to you that the mistranslations even take work and effort! So it's back to the drawing board for you.
Through your distorted view of the Greek and skewed view of the Vine's Dictionary, you are trying to "shoe horn" works "into" salvation through faith. The Greek words for "pistis" and "pisteuo" are two forms of the same word. "Pistis" is the noun form, "pisteuo" is the verb form. Nothing in the root meaning of either word carries any concept of works.
If you believe in/have faith in Christ for salvation, then you are trusting in Him alone to save you. Although saving belief results in actions appropriate to the belief (to one degree or the other/all genuine believers are fruitful, yet not all are equally fruitful) - the actions are NOT INHERENT in the belief. *Prior to my conversion, while still attending the Roman Catholic church, I also was confused about this (just as you are now) and basically defined faith "as" obedience/works.
I get my understanding of Faith from the Greek Scriptures. I have a Strong's expanded exhaustive concordance of the Bible and Pisteuo #4100 says - to have faith (in, upon, or with respect to, a person or thing),
to entrust (especially one's spiritual well being to Christ). It goes on to say, pisteuo means not just to believe, but also to
be persuaded of; and hence, to place confidence in, to trust, and signifies, in this sense of the word, reliance upon. *So saving faith is (belief, trust, reliance) in Jesus Christ for salvation.
So you have proved absolutely nothing and it's back to the drawing board for you.
Let me know when you are ready to repent and believe the gospel.