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On the Edge of Hope: No Matter How Dark the Night, the Redeemed Soul Still Sings
"One of the most important books you are ever going to read." --from the foreword by CHRISTINE CAINE
The Light of Hope Is Closer Than You Know
When our once-solid worlds suddenly shift and heave, we find ourselves desperately trying to hold it all together. We suffer silently, ashamed of our struggles with things like anxiety, depression, and sleeplessness--after all, everyone else seems to be fine.
Yet the truth is that everyone tastes from the cup of suffering.
With unassuming honesty and candor, Dr. Mark Chironna openly shares what he learned in his own three-year battle with darkness. Integrating the best of theology with Christ-centered psychology, he offers scriptural and holistic truths that will help lead you out of the murky depths. Though it feels as if this dark night will never end, you can walk through your uncertainty, fears, and tears to find the edge of hope again.
"The scariest place can also be your threshold. Step through it knowing God is there with you, and your healing can happen right in the middle of your chaos."--Mark Chironna
"Sweeping wisdom and weeping compassion . . . a manifesto of hope that conveys both modesty of spirit and majesty of thought." --LEONARD SWEET, founder, PreachTheStory.com; author, Songs of Light series
"I highly recommend this book to anyone who is going through a storm or knows someone who is!" --KRIS VALLOTTON, senior associate leader, Bethel Church, Redding, California
The Light of Hope Is Closer Than You Know
When our once-solid worlds suddenly shift and heave, we find ourselves desperately trying to hold it all together. We suffer silently, ashamed of our struggles with things like anxiety, depression, and sleeplessness--after all, everyone else seems to be fine.
Yet the truth is that everyone tastes from the cup of suffering.
With unassuming honesty and candor, Dr. Mark Chironna openly shares what he learned in his own three-year battle with darkness. Integrating the best of theology with Christ-centered psychology, he offers scriptural and holistic truths that will help lead you out of the murky depths. Though it feels as if this dark night will never end, you can walk through your uncertainty, fears, and tears to find the edge of hope again.
"The scariest place can also be your threshold. Step through it knowing God is there with you, and your healing can happen right in the middle of your chaos."--Mark Chironna
"Sweeping wisdom and weeping compassion . . . a manifesto of hope that conveys both modesty of spirit and majesty of thought." --LEONARD SWEET, founder, PreachTheStory.com; author, Songs of Light series
"I highly recommend this book to anyone who is going through a storm or knows someone who is!" --KRIS VALLOTTON, senior associate leader, Bethel Church, Redding, California
208 pages, Paperback
Published July 19, 2022
27 people are currently reading
40 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
August 18, 2022
On the Edge of Hope by Mark Chironna integrates theology and Christ-centered psychology to offer hope for those struggling with anxiety, depression, and pain.
Even though I'm unfamiliar with the author/pastor, the title of this book caught my attention and I knew I wanted to read it. Chironna's writing is vulnerable and honest. I found myself nodding in agreement with the hard-learned wisdom he shares.
We all want easy answers and quick fixes so we can move past anxiety and pain as fast as we can. But the road to healing is complex and requires learning and "grunt work." In this book, Chironna takes you along his journey of finding hope in God through the dark season he walked through.
The author's experience as a pastor and his degrees in theology and psychology give credence to his writing and helped me understand how healing involves the body, mind, and soul.
Chironna encourages self-awareness so we can recognize how habitual ways of observing and interpreting the world can hinder growth. I loved how he shared personal examples as he navigated how his upbringing and life experiences affected his view of the world.
"It was painful for me to admit that I was dealing with anxiety and depression. And it was even more painful to accept that I could not fix it myself or speed up the healing process, no matter how hard I tried. Once I came to terms with those realities, I began to discover how deep-seated certain negative beliefs and assumptions were in me, beliefs and assumptions that needed to be removed. That was painful, too. But I was finally seeing myself clearly, and I was grateful for that. Sooner or later we must face our issues squarely. We cannot do that without self-awareness."
"At times our minds are minefields filled with cognitive distortions, generalizations, willful gaps in knowledge, and areas of blind deletions resulting from our refusal to see what we need to see."
"God is ever patiently at work to heal us, taking all the necessary time to free us from the primal fears that wreck our lives. Jesus, by the Spirit and on the Father's behalf, continually works in us to strip away every mask of shame and false pretense. He is delivering us from the fear of rejection and invisibility, and He labors to bring us face-to-face with His glorious Father, in whom there is no shadow of turning."
I thought Chironna gave a thorough explanation of how our thoughts influence our feelings, while also acknowledging how Satan affects our thoughts.
"The enemy works on us by affecting our thinking, and we're most vulnerable when we're aware that he works this way. So it's important to remember that all our thoughts "come" to us. Discerning where they come from matters immensely. Not all our thoughts come from us; some come from our heart and others don't. These other thoughts "come" in a similar fashion to the thoughts of the heart, yet they are sourced in our enemy's lies, planted in our minds by the evil one."
But the fact that we must evaluate what's influencing our thoughts, doesn't mean our emotions are bad. I appreciated how the author sorted through some teaching in the church that perpetuates negative beliefs and assumptions about emotions. Our emotions are God-given and meant to inform us. Our bodies inform us by reacting to stress.
"Sermons that warn us against trusting our feelings encourage us to dismiss our feelings as irrelevant. But not listening to our bodies means dismissing one of the truths' most trustworthy witnesses. Often, our bodies try to tell us how stressed we are, how overworked we are, how frustrated we are, how angry we are, how burned out we are, and how tired we are. To ignore those messages is to ignore the voice of truth—the voice of the Spirit that calls us toward life."
I enjoyed reading every chapter in this book. I love learning about how God created our minds to work because it helps me understand how to work through anxiety and sort through my complicated thoughts and emotions so I can train my mind to think upon truth instead of lies.
I received a free copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.
Even though I'm unfamiliar with the author/pastor, the title of this book caught my attention and I knew I wanted to read it. Chironna's writing is vulnerable and honest. I found myself nodding in agreement with the hard-learned wisdom he shares.
We all want easy answers and quick fixes so we can move past anxiety and pain as fast as we can. But the road to healing is complex and requires learning and "grunt work." In this book, Chironna takes you along his journey of finding hope in God through the dark season he walked through.
The author's experience as a pastor and his degrees in theology and psychology give credence to his writing and helped me understand how healing involves the body, mind, and soul.
Chironna encourages self-awareness so we can recognize how habitual ways of observing and interpreting the world can hinder growth. I loved how he shared personal examples as he navigated how his upbringing and life experiences affected his view of the world.
"It was painful for me to admit that I was dealing with anxiety and depression. And it was even more painful to accept that I could not fix it myself or speed up the healing process, no matter how hard I tried. Once I came to terms with those realities, I began to discover how deep-seated certain negative beliefs and assumptions were in me, beliefs and assumptions that needed to be removed. That was painful, too. But I was finally seeing myself clearly, and I was grateful for that. Sooner or later we must face our issues squarely. We cannot do that without self-awareness."
"At times our minds are minefields filled with cognitive distortions, generalizations, willful gaps in knowledge, and areas of blind deletions resulting from our refusal to see what we need to see."
"God is ever patiently at work to heal us, taking all the necessary time to free us from the primal fears that wreck our lives. Jesus, by the Spirit and on the Father's behalf, continually works in us to strip away every mask of shame and false pretense. He is delivering us from the fear of rejection and invisibility, and He labors to bring us face-to-face with His glorious Father, in whom there is no shadow of turning."
I thought Chironna gave a thorough explanation of how our thoughts influence our feelings, while also acknowledging how Satan affects our thoughts.
"The enemy works on us by affecting our thinking, and we're most vulnerable when we're aware that he works this way. So it's important to remember that all our thoughts "come" to us. Discerning where they come from matters immensely. Not all our thoughts come from us; some come from our heart and others don't. These other thoughts "come" in a similar fashion to the thoughts of the heart, yet they are sourced in our enemy's lies, planted in our minds by the evil one."
But the fact that we must evaluate what's influencing our thoughts, doesn't mean our emotions are bad. I appreciated how the author sorted through some teaching in the church that perpetuates negative beliefs and assumptions about emotions. Our emotions are God-given and meant to inform us. Our bodies inform us by reacting to stress.
"Sermons that warn us against trusting our feelings encourage us to dismiss our feelings as irrelevant. But not listening to our bodies means dismissing one of the truths' most trustworthy witnesses. Often, our bodies try to tell us how stressed we are, how overworked we are, how frustrated we are, how angry we are, how burned out we are, and how tired we are. To ignore those messages is to ignore the voice of truth—the voice of the Spirit that calls us toward life."
I enjoyed reading every chapter in this book. I love learning about how God created our minds to work because it helps me understand how to work through anxiety and sort through my complicated thoughts and emotions so I can train my mind to think upon truth instead of lies.
I received a free copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.
July 24, 2022
On the Edge of Hope, Mark Chironna explored the darkness and the suffering and how we can get our hope back. He opened up about how he spent three and a half years going into a deep darkness. He felt anxiety, depression, and tremendous pressure from life. He compared his pain to that of his experience with kidney stones. He shared how he felt he lost his voice and the pain he experienced. He lost about twenty pounds because he stopped eating as much and had to force himself to eat. He shared how he lost his own personal power. Before his breakdown, he was traveling a lot and speaking 4-5 times a week and he had a hectic schedule. He was a pastor and did coaching. He shared how we believe that all of our thoughts are accurate because we are thinking them. These can be positive or negative thoughts or even a mixture of them. In the book, he looked at the story of Job and how he suffered and he dealt with feeling like a bus hit him. Mark shared how he also went through a period of darkness and what he learned along the way.
I would recommend this awesome book to anyone is going through a period of darkness and they are looking for a ray of hope. I appreciated how open Mark was when he shared how he dealt with his darkness and how he was able to turn his life around and come back into the light. I also liked how he shared a personal story about his grandfather and the struggles he endured. I liked how he shared that when his own father lost his own brother it changed him and influenced how he raised his own son, Mark. I immensely love how he explored Job and what we can learn from his own hardships.
"I received this book free from the publisher, Bethany House/ Chosen for my honest review.”
I would recommend this awesome book to anyone is going through a period of darkness and they are looking for a ray of hope. I appreciated how open Mark was when he shared how he dealt with his darkness and how he was able to turn his life around and come back into the light. I also liked how he shared a personal story about his grandfather and the struggles he endured. I liked how he shared that when his own father lost his own brother it changed him and influenced how he raised his own son, Mark. I immensely love how he explored Job and what we can learn from his own hardships.
"I received this book free from the publisher, Bethany House/ Chosen for my honest review.”
July 29, 2022
This book is a story of one man's journey through of crushing anxiety & deep depression & God's work of healing & redemption. It is also a richly insightful theological & psychological exploration of human brokenness & God's work of deliverance & restoration. It is an immensely readable & engaging book. It is full of human warms, naked honesty, & deep wisdom. Everyone who has faced, is facing, or will face the grinding trials of life in this broken & troubled world should read this book. A deeply rewarding read.
February 28, 2023
Finished this book in a day. It was so timely for many things I’m currently walking through in life. Dr Chrionna’s ability to wrestle with the scriptures and also deal with the difficult nuances of life through a Christian perspective is remarkable. I feel that he is one of the best teachers we have about mental health in the community. He encourages that healing is not magic but is found in the person of Jesus Christ. Thankful that he shared his testimony so that others could be made whole as well.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
October 3, 2022
The author chronicles his journey with depression and anxiety and how God brought healing and redemption to his life. Chironna is honest with his struggles, and he shares the wisdom he has gained over the years. Personal stories are relatable and likely to give the reader hope for their own situation. Those experiencing anxiety and depression may benefit from Chironna's insight.
Disclaimer: I received a complimentary copy, but I wasn't required to leave a positive review.
Disclaimer: I received a complimentary copy, but I wasn't required to leave a positive review.
June 20, 2024
This is one of the more transparent books on suffering. I appreciated the fact that the author did not deny the reality of suffering. It offers insight into anxiety and depression from a Christian and psychological point of view; making this a helpful resource for those in ministry or anyone going through “a dark night of the soul.”
February 4, 2025
I have just completed reading the foreward and it is the best written foreward I have read thus far. It already stirred questions within me and answering some questions I have been asking for a while. And if the foreward is this good, I can't wait to explore the chapters. The best part of the foreward is: God can heal us instantly but sometimes and for some persons, God allows us to go through a recovery process that invovles pain, suffering, and endurance. Recovery is a journey not a destination. And the objective of this Journey is to become whole again. It is to heal mind, body and spirit.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews