The most important thing a person needs is to be born-again (John 3:3). From personal experience and from the experience of others, certain things give you the assurance that you are born-again. If you are born-again, you stop thinking about yourself alone. You stop thinking only about what Jesus can do for you but also of what you can do for Jesus. This was the case with Paul after he met the Lord in Acts 9:6:
“And he trembling and astonished said, Lord, what wilt thou have me to do? And the Lord said unto him, Arise, and go into the city, and it shall be told thee what thou must do.”
You also begin to think about restitution (Luke 19:, and you begin to serve God with the same vigour with which you served the devil (Acts 9:20-22).
 
After you are saved, you need to be sanctified before you can be divinely commissioned for service. An unsanctified believer is susceptible to backsliding, hence the need for sanctification. The state of the human heart before salvation is one of the reasons why sanctification is necessary. Jeremiah 17:9 reveals that:
“The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?”
Every person is born with a heart that is desperately wicked, and every of our actions originate from the heart (Matthew 15:19-20). Sanctification changes the nature of a person’s heart (Ezekiel 36:26-27). Many people who were once born-again backslid because of their failure to get sanctified. A backslider is worse than a sinner who has never been saved. Backsliding is horrible. It can be likened to a dog going back to its vomit. Worldliness can cause a Christian to backslide. Demas was an example of a Christian worker who backslid because of his attachment to the things of this world (Philemon 24, 2 Timothy 4:10).
 
The ability to live holy is given by God. Jesus died for our sanctification. When a person is sanctified, he or she begins to think like Jesus. You forgive like Jesus and like Him, you become humble. You develop a servant–spirit and you become obedient and meek (Matthew 11:29). To become sanctified, you must believe that it is possible to live holy (1 Peter 1:15-16). You must then admit that you cannot do it without the assistance of the Holy Spirit (John 15:5). Finally, ask God to remove the heart of stone from you and replace it with a heart of flesh.