(CLOSED) "Chucking College" giveaway and guest post by Melanie Ellison

(This giveaway is now  closed)
Hi! Welcome to our very first giveaway post! This year we had the pleasure of meeting Melanie Ellison, author of "Chucking College", at Family Week. We bought an author signed copy of "Chucking College"  with the intention of using it in a giveaway for our readers, and Melanie agreed to share a guest post with us.
   Here is how you can enter to win.
1. Leave a comment telling us one way you strive to live everyday set-apart
2. Share the giveaway on Facebook, or your blog and then comment telling us you did.
3. Tell someone in person about the giveaway, and ask them to comment that you referred them.
So there are three possible entries per person. The giveaway will end Tuesday, June 18th, at 12pm and we will be announcing the winner that afternoon.
 If you would like to purchase your own copy of "Chucking College" it is available at: http://chuckingcollege.com/Home.html
We hope you enjoy the following guest post by Melanie Ellison.
Blessings,
                                                                Naomi

What will it profit a girl if she gains the whole world but loses her soul, her lifetime financial freedom, her purity, her love of reading, her unique individuality, her entrepreneurial momentum, and four peak years of her life?
A college degree may no longer be worth the world to us when we see what we have to surrender for it.
The costs for that piece of paper—financial, emotional, spiritual, and temporal—rise higher with every graduation.


When we really think it over, a degree may not be necessary to equip us for each of our life purposes as Christian women. Having to spend all one’s time jumping through an institution’s contemporarily-hip course hoops makes it very difficult to find the time to master domestic skills we will need in our future homes. If a young woman spends four to eight years debating worldly philosophy and studying for a career, she is simply not going to possess as much competence in running a home and living a life of self-sacrifice for her man and her babies as the young woman who has been practicing those skills daily. College saps valuable time from preparing for the life many of us hope to live someday—that of a wife and mother.


Admittedly, college does have attractive benefits, but not without costs that most often far outweigh them. When family and friends say, “You’re strong enough to keep your faith through college!  You won’t become one of the 50-80% who lose their faith at college!” how do you know? Satan fell from heaven and Eve fell from the Garden of Eden!  Our hearts are deceitful, and they seek excuses to sin. “Therefore let him who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall,” warns 1 Corinthians 10:12.

 Proverbs 16:17 declares, “The highway of the upright is to depart from evil; he who keeps his way preserves his soul.” Therefore, according to Scripture, the descriptive characteristic of the righteous is that they are set-apart and holy—not loitering and trying to survive in the midst of those who habitually practice sin.

If we truly believe that college is often a type of Sodom, then longing for it could be as deadly for us as it was for Lot’s wife, when she looked back. Sodom, her home, was similar to college with all its attractions, stimulations, and ventures into the thrills of the world. She must have despised what was ahead of her by comparison—life in a cave. It was when she doubted the value of her forthcoming life of hardship that she longed for the familiarity she had with the worldliness of Sodom—"the treasures of Egypt,” so to speak. She looked back when she stopped looking ahead to her reward.

The enemy desperately wants to get us young ladies out from the protection of our fathers’ homes. That is why we sometimes feel the draw to think that anywhere else would be more productive than being at home. He wants to destroy us, and cannot access us as easily while we remain under authority. Realizing this can help us feel validated at home, and help us move on to be productive (have entrepreneurial businesses and ministries, and exercise hospitality) from the hub of our home.

Skipping college does not imply that we are to also give up on advanced education or perfecting our talents. Skills are vitally important to bring glory to the Name of God. Excellence is a work’s glory. So we must look for unique ways to develop skills without necessarily conforming to the college cookie-cutter pattern. 

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 Melanie Ellison (22) is the author of Chucking College: Achieving Success Without Corruption. 
Her book reveals the way to obtain an advanced education without having to endure dorm immorality,
exorbitant tuition costs, and spiritual assault. Go to www.chuckingcollege.com to discover how skipping college may be the best educational decision you ever make. Or purchase through Amazon.com