Singleness: A Season to Build Each Other

For the past two weeks, the topic ‘singleness’ has been popping up, so I’ve decided to interview amazing women of God in my community on how to be joyful in the season of singleness. From Dori Del Rio’s “Jesus is enough” to Maki’s firing words “in the waiting, trust in the ONE”, they all dropped the fire and shared amazing testimonials.

You can listen to all episodes Here.

But, what about getting a man’s perspective? I mean, it would be cool to hear them out; their perspective on how they enjoy their season of singleness— that’s what I told God in one of our conversations, and boy…He didn’t take long to answer me back!

The next day, as I was at Jonh’s Bevere Killing Kryptonite Tour, I saw an opportunity— Arden and Alec Bevere. Let me clarify, the night before, as I was closing up my day, I said: “Jesus, it would be cool if I could interview Sons&Daughters – AKA Arden and Alec – and have them share their perspective about men’s singleness”.

Well, the Bible says, “Ask and it will be given to you.” (Matthew 7:7 NIV).

I didn’t know these guys personally, only through the web. And truth be told, I didn’t know what to expect. But anyways, It took a big gulp of breath and my confidence in Jesus to go forth to introduce myself— a very common thing to do as a Latina, establish a conversation, and ask Alec to talk on my podcast— easy peasy, right?

Note to self and to everyone reading; they are both super kind and humble. I didn’t expect Alec Bevere to keep the conversation on (I didn’t want to take a lot of his time so tried to keep it ‘simplish.’) Shout out to him for putting up with this intense-hyper-latina being!

Anyhow, I asked him to share some wisdom about singleness from a guy’s perspective; and how God has been growing him in the season of singleness. Here is what he shared:

“One of the beautiful things about relationships is growing together, and a man really feels like a man whenever he is growing with a girl, and a girl really feels like a woman when she is growing with a man, and the man and woman both are growing together. That’s the amazing thing about being in a relationship. I would say in the season of being single, a lot of times guys don’t really look to other guys to have fun with or to do things that are manly. That’s the best way to describe it, I am not saying that the answer is going to a man’s conference, but the men’s conference that I recently went to is a really good depiction of what it means to be a man. We were doing these fun and crazy manly things and we were just being men: we were having competitions like pulling trucks to see who could pull the trucks the fastest and doing push up competitions. So what happened was that we created an environment for all these men to be men and to (lift each other up.)”

“The important thing, whenever a man is in a relationship with a woman, is that he is still sharpening himself (in community) with other men. A lot of times, we think that the time to do that is whenever we are in a relationship, but I’ll say it’s great whenever we realize that you can be around other men while you are single, with no strings attached (to any lady); they don’t feel that you are trying to get anything from them but that you are trying to be for them, to encourage them. And if they are after a girl or dealing with something, it’s a really amazing process to push them along the journey… to say ‘I am gonna keep you accountable, we are gonna hang out, we are going to figure this out’. I think whenever men (stand with) men they become so strong and that’s a joy. If you look at King David, the mighty men that he surrounded himself with, they were his joy. He cried so hard for Jonathan and whenever different people betrayed him that were guy friends, he really felt this strong bond (with them).” 

“I‘m not sure if that’s what you are looking for, but I would say right now that is something that God has been pushing in my heart recently: the importance of being a man with other men.” – Does that answer your question?

I responded: “Yes, it’s actually funny that you said that because we recently had a women’s conference, like two or three weeks ago, and the slogan of the conference was “we are for each other, not against each other”, and you just gave me the men’s version of that.”

He continued. “Absolutely. Which is awesome! Yes, women are very good at encouraging each other, but a lot of times it’s harder for a man to actually find those good four core men (to stand with). I feel like women need more than that (number), but men don’t really need that many. If you are a guy and you are (reading) this right now, I feel like you don’t really need to have (too many) guys around you”.

Additionally, he gave some advice to ladies. “The best thing you could say to a man, ladies, is: ‘You are the definition of a man’. ‘Whenever I think about you I think of someone that is a MAN’. That brings out things in a man. These days, men are kind of torn down, they are stripped down from being a man. You saying these words is gonna make them feel stronger and to be a better person in a relationship. The authority that a man has, to be able to bring stuff out of women, comes whenever he realizes the authority of him being a man–that he can draw these gifts that are in a woman.  

Alec’s final strike was: “True men will see gifts within a woman and will have the authority to pull them out of her. God brought Eve to Adam, and Adam was the one who actually called her a ‘woman’. Men are supposed to speak things into existence for women. If they are really going to be able to be incredible men, they need to make sure to get the confidence in themselves, in their own masculinity; to feel they have the power to speak stuff into a woman’s life.”