Emily Parker shares a Fusion message from Bekah Legg, the editor of Liberti Magazine.

Bekah Legg

Hearing other people's personal experiences and journey can help encourage us in our walk. Knowing others have overcome in life helps us to face the challenges in front of us.

I'd like to share with you something Bekah Legg spoke about. I interviewed her on Fusion, my Cross Rhythms radio show. Fusion encourages young girls to rise up and discover who they were made to be.

Bekah is a part time teacher and also the editor of Liberti Magazine. Liberti Magazine is a vibrant, contemporary magazine with a heart for freedom. Their vision is that Liberti would reach women all over the country, and beyond, with the message that Jesus was good news to women, that he went out of his way to honour, restore and release them and that he still does.

Bekah discussed on the show about the importance of the freedom we have in the choices we make. Freedom is something she is passionate about. This is what she shared:

"The magazine I edit is called Liberty and liberty is Latin for freedom. I used to live in Kenya in a very abusive marriage and so to me freedom looked like being literally rescued from a place of danger. I was brought over to England and was able to be safe. It's the kind of freedom in the way you expect it, proper chains being broken, properly being released. But actually, the more I got to know God, the more I've understood that freedom isn't just about those things. Sometimes it's about finding freedom even in the difficult places and that sometimes, freedom is inside us and freedom is about the choices that we make.

There are some characters in the Bible who lived in a really difficult time, in places where they weren't allowed to be the person that they really were. They weren't allowed to worship God in the way that they wanted to worship God, or the way that they were called to worship God. Yet somehow they still managed to find a way of expressing freedom in that place.

Daniel lived in Babylon and he had to serve the king. There came a point when he was told he couldn't pray anymore and he couldn't do the thing that connected him to God and the thing that he most wanted to do, because if he did, then he'd get killed. In that place he found freedom. Not because God came in and magically changed the rules and not because God magically rescued him. He found freedom, because in that place, as he sat and as he thought about it, he realised that the king had made rules to control his behaviour, but what the king couldn't do, is control Daniel's choices. Daniel could still choose to do the right thing, even though he didn't know God would rescue him; he wasn't sure about that. If you read what it says in the Bible, it says really clearly that Daniel says, "Now even if I die, I won't do this differently".

Daniel made choices and that's where freedom comes. We live in a world where when we're at school and at work, people try to tell us who we should be. The television tells us what we should be like and the things we should be doing and the things we should be saying. Freedom comes when we know that God's given us the freedom to make our own choices to be the person that he calls us to be; to say the things that he called us to say and to do the things he called us to do. When we understand that, then we can really truly become everything he intended us to be.

The other person in the Bible who found that kind of freedom was Esther. She was somebody that we can perhaps relate to a little bit better, because she's somebody we think of as winning this talent contest to become the queen. However the truth is she was much more like a trafficking victim; a girl who got taken against her will to go and live in the palace. All she could do was be taught how to make herself beautiful and be prepared to be this object for the king. Then more laws were passed in this foreign land where she was told it wasn't ok to be a Jew and it wasn't ok to follow God. She was told you had to do things in a certain way. For her, the most obvious response to that would be to keep her head down and be quiet about who she was and to obey those laws and let that king control her. Instead, she made the freedom choice to say: you know what, I might end up dead, but I am going to do the thing that's right and I am going to do the thing that God has called me to do. I am going to protect my people and be the follower of God that I was born to be. She made her freedom choice too.

So my challenge to you is this: have a little look at your life. Are there areas in your life where you can recognise that you're not being who you were created to be? Are there areas where you're not doing things you are called to do, because the pressure's from all around you? Are you being controlled and it feels like people aren't letting you do what you want to do, or the things that you think you should do? Then my real challenge is this: Can you find the courage to pick up the freedom that Jesus gives us and to act and be everything that God ever wanted you to be?"

To find out more about Liberti Magazine visit: www.libertimagazine.com.