This is about confronting the wolves. If you are wise, you’ll do it.

“Whaddya’ mean, ‘If I’m wise!?’” I can hear the question already.

The Bible teaches that wisdom begins with a fear of the Lord (Prov. 9:10). Let’s unpack that and see where it goes.

First, in this verse, “fear” is not the same thing as “afraid” – at least not mostly. If we are truly IN the faith, then we should have a constant awe for God that reminds us of His holiness, justice, and righteousness.

And yes – if we have this posture, we’ll also properly “fear Him who is able to destroy both body and soul in hell” (Matt. 10:28). God is the final judge, and even for the Christian, there will be some face-to-face accountability with Him (2 Cor. 5:10).

But, second, what Proverbs is emphasizing is that a legitimate definition of learning, awareness, and applicable knowledge has to begin someplace. That “someplace” is a correct attitude towards God and a right respect for who He is.

Here’s a gut check. If you doubt Jesus Christ is who He claims to be, then you display a lack of wisdom. If you choose not to believe in Him, if you think there is more than one way to eternal life, or if you’re comfortable defining “God” by your personal preferences and tolerances, then you cannot be wise.

If you don’t believe the Bible says what it means and means what it says – if you’d rather impose your own preferences on Scripture – then wisdom will elude you. You have zero idea how ridiculous and foolish you will become instead (Rom. 1:20-21).

Honestly – this issue is quite plain. If you think you’re wise by any definition other than what is found in God’s Word – you’re not!

Forget about advanced college degrees, framed certificates, and all similar forms of man’s recognition and praise. Big deal!

Those things just mean you got the assignments done. They mean you did what you were told to, and you met man’s standards. A trained dolphin does the same thing.

Some of the most inept, incapable, destructive, arrogant, and foolish people I have known have a parade of alphabet soup after their name. They thought they were something they weren’t. Degrees don’t change the heart.

The truth is real wisdom starts with a proper relationship with God. There is a direct and inviolable connection. That’s the essence of what Proverbs 9:10 is saying.

If you’re not in a proper relationship with your Creator, your views and actions will be futile, irrational, and unwise. If you’d rather embrace a cultural view of Jesus Christ that paints Him as racist, imperfect, genderless – – or anything other than what the Bible plainly states – well, then you DON’T and you WON’T have wisdom.

The implications of this go much further. If you don’t have a right reverence for God, you won’t have a right respect for morality. You won’t pursue God’s values. Sound character – and virtues like honesty, self-control, integrity, and fairness – will mean little to you.

Issues like fair elections, true justice, law and order, the nuclear family, two genders, and national boundaries are some of the things you will be inclined to mock if you don’t have a right view of God. All of these things find their foundation in God’s inerrant Word.

Furthermore, if Biblical truth is not valued BY you, then human life holds no real value FOR you. This is especially the case with those who haven’t taken their first breath – or with those who are close to their last one.

Here’s the heart of what I want to say. We are surrounded by wolves who are working to tear down and suppress God’s truth. Those wolves are attacking the very pillars of wisdom, and they are breeding rapidly both INSIDE the church and OUTSIDE of it.

It’s not a new problem. It was a dilemma many centuries ago when God’s faithful followers encountered wolves inside and outside of their religious convictions. Daniel 11:21-35 tells the whole story.

Here, we find a corrupt leader who came to power deceptively. He tried to enforce cultural conformity because he had no tolerance for the truth. Everyone had to goose-step the same way because his agenda was one that did not revere God.

Though his policies were foolish, and though they made no sense, he still managed to get some of the religious leaders on his side. He flattered them. He made them feel special when they conformed to his mandates, and when they compromised the most important things they needed to cling to instead.

Daniel 11:32-33 contains a remarkable statement, “….the people who know their God will be strong and take action. Those who are wise will instruct many.”

These people were the REAL heroes. They stood up for what was proper. They were not like all the foolish folk. They preserved a proper reverence for God, and they held others accountable to the things that were right.

They went where it was uncomfortable to go, and they said what was uncomfortable to say. And the Bible says they were wise for doing this.

They were few, but they bucked the system. They ‘held others’ spiritual feet to the fire.’ They called a spade a spade. They bravely stood their ground, and they cried, “Fraud!” when it was so.

They refused to compromise or bend. They knew the truth, and they clung to it. They paid a price for doing what was right, but they did it anyways. They did it because they were ‘wise.’

As it was true in the past, so it is true now. Those who truly “know their God” – those who are wise – will display strength and act against deception and compromise just as those who revered God before ALSO did. Those who embrace the truth of God’s Word will resist the encroachment of the world’s ideas upon it.

The hard-hitting example of Daniel 11:32-33 shows there is a distinction between two types of people: those who are strong and wise, and those who are not. It is the strong and wise ones that will resist any invasion into the pillars and expressions of their faith.

It is those who are sincere and committed in their faith who will achieve the things Daniel 11:32-33 calls “great exploits.” It takes a strong person to RESIST the seduction that they are doing the right thing when they let the world define them and their choices.

The wolves are among us – there is no doubt about that. Just look around you.

Confronting them takes great wisdom and strength.

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This article is a personal story with a few takeaways and lessons learned.

In 2008, the Pastor of the church my family was attending left for another church. In the wake of his departure, the small Sunday School class he had taught found itself without a teacher. I volunteered to teach that class.

My emphasis was literal expository teaching. What does that mean?

FIRST, it means more than just going verse by verse. It’s teaching what IS there. We should not sidestep or dilute what the Bible is really saying to us.

SECOND, it’s unwise to teach what is NOT there. We should not manipulate passages to reinforce personal preferences or popular themes that those passages may not hold.

And THIRD, if the Bible states it plainly, we should TOO. Political correctness is not an ally of truth or any sound doctrine. It is most responsible to declare the Scriptures forthrightly.

In time, that Sunday School class outgrew the ‘half-court gym’ it was in. By this point, it was regularly drawing folks from other churches, too. Good ideas were proposed to continue to grow the class within the church it was part of, but those efforts hit a wall. Instead, the class was shut down.

I was told by many, “It was a good run, Steve, but God has now closed this door. It’s time for you to move on to other things.”

I took a few months to reflect. I decided to reform the class as ‘Solid Bread Community,’ an independent teaching ministry, and I began to hunt for an appropriate space to rent. I found a full-sized Gym at a local high school, and Solid Bread Community re-launched its new Sunday morning routines.

This sort of concept hadn’t been done before, and there were many uncertainties. Would folks align with this? Would any of its previous attendees return? How would we get the word out? How would we address our bills and obligations?

There were tons of questions but few answers. A bunch of folks felt safe by standing on the sidelines and predicting Solid Bread Community’s failure. Some of them even hoped for this.

But that didn’t happen. Solid Bread Community debuted with a good crowd, and through word-of-mouth, it kept growing. We didn’t talk about financial support, but people found the little shoebox at the entrance with the slot cut in the lid. It didn’t take long for me to realize God had directed all of this – exactly the way it had all played out.

Solid Bread Community is still growing. It has now become SEVERAL separate, thriving, and growing communities of believers throughout northern Colorado and southeastern Wyoming. It regularly draws attendees from a wide region, and it now rents several different locations for its meetings in different cities on different days. Solid Bread Community is now the primary fellowship for many of its attendees; folks are getting saved, and they are growing well, and we recently began to incorporate a deep emphasis on celebrating The Lord’s Supper.

Each week, Solid Bread Community meets Sunday morning in Fort Collins, CO; Sunday evening in Windsor, CO; Tuesday evening in Cheyenne, WYO – and soon we will add Thursday evening in Longmont, CO. Lord willing, a new series in evangelism and discipleship will start Wednesday evenings this coming Fall.

Our third annual Bible prophecy conference, “Awake and Aware,” featuring Pete Garcia, Lee Brainard, Gino Geraci, Brandon Holthhaus, and Mondo Gonzales, is scheduled for Friday and Saturday, Sept. 11 and 12, 2026. All things considered, I recently made the decision to focus on Solid Bread Community full-time. I feel this is the direction I believe the Lord is leading me.

Because Bible Prophecy comprises more than one quarter of God’s Word, Solid Bread Community gives this very important content some serious focus. Verse-by-verse studies have also been conducted through most of Proverbs, and all of Jude, Daniel, and Jonah. A new series in 1 and 2 Thessalonians began in Dec. 2025. Past in-depth topical studies have included: ‘A Biblical View of the End Times,’ ‘The Biblical Covenants,’ ‘What is the Church?’ ‘What Happens When We Die?’ ‘Knowing Israel,’ ‘Until He Comes: Understanding the Lord’s Supper,’ and ‘The Rise of Lawlessness.’

At the end here, some additional information is provided about Solid Bread Community, including its teaching resources, videos, current and past series, and so on. Please explore those links and tell others about them.

In closing, let me share a few quick insights and some lessons I’ve learned the harder way:

SOMETIMES GOD NEEDS TO GIVE US A BIG SHOVE. Our human nature is risk-averse. We’d rather stay with ‘known’ downsides than launch ourselves into ‘unknown’ possible upsides. Basically, we like things where we can measure and control them. But God is not that way. Often, His will is that we need to ‘live life on the edge.’ Paul, Elijah, Abraham, etc., all had to do this. That means we need to trust God, we need to depend on Him daily, and we need to set aside our own human ‘wisdom.’ If necessary, God will take us through painful chapters to get us to move where He wants us to go. Sometimes that means giving us a big shove to get us out of something that is not working to something that He knows will.

IT’S BETTER TO ENDURE WITH THE REMNANT THAN RUN WITH THE CROWD. The church today is in rough spiritual shape, and that’s putting it mildly.  It has convinced itself that its institutional model, with all its programs, buildings, budgets, committees, youth centers, coffeeshops, art galleries, social gospel, bands, gluten-free communion wafers, and other cultural and administrative routines, is the Biblical model. NOTHING could be further from the truth, and many churches and pastors today have zero clue how ‘lukewarm’ they really are (Rev. 3:16), or that Jesus is trying to get INTO their church (Rev. 3:20).

I am becoming increasingly convinced that the proportion of ‘Christians’ that are truly saved is smaller than we think. The modern church shoulders much of this blame.

DON’T PLACE CHURCHES ON A PEDESTAL THEY SHOULDN’T BE PLACED ON. This point is related to the one just before. Here’s a hard, but essential, truth: you’re risking your own eternal destiny if you’re measuring yourself by the standards of a church that has ‘left its first love’ (Rev. 2:4), or which Jesus says He will ‘spit out of His mouth’ (again, Rev. 3:16). Big buildings and big numbers mean nothing. Look for THE truth. Look for people that are operating within their gifting and aren’t trying to be something they shouldn’t be. Look for those who ARE properly teaching the full counsel of God’s Word and don’t just claim they are. Look for results by God’s standards, and not by man’s.

And don’t be fooled by degrees and such.  A 2016 Lifeway Research survey found that the more seminary education a pastor had, the less they believed in the Biblical pre-trib Rapture.

SHIFT YOUR PRIORITIES TO LIVING FOR ETERNITY. If you are truly saved, then God has already filled a space within you that only He can. And because He has done this, He has now wired you for a greater purpose than waking up each day punching a clock, buying a second home, padding your retirement savings, or pursuing another round of golf. Those things are not necessarily bad in and of themselves, but YOU have an opportunity to hear, “Well done good and faithful servant” someday – so LIVE like it! Shift your priorities! Act like you really believe the things you say you do!

I have done a lot and accomplished a lot in my life, but I confessed to my wife the other day that I’ve never been happier than I now am.  I’m doing what I know God WANTS me to be doing. It’s gratifying to be in that sweet spot.

If you want to learn more about Solid Bread Community, or you want to listen to our current 90-week teaching series on “A Biblical View of the End Times,” or any of our other series, go to our YouTube channel at https://www.youtube.com/@SolidBreadCommunity. Please consider subscribing to that and telling others about it.

If you live in southeastern Wyoming or along the Colorado Front Range, and you want to consider attending Solid Bread Community at any of the times and places we meet, you can find more information at www.solidbreadcommunity.com. Thank you!

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