Suffering with Joy

Suffering has been our constant companion since the Fall. It is a great equalizer that eventually comes calling at the door of every family and is never a welcome guest. In this helpful book, Tom Ascol serves as companion, model, and teacher as he helps his loved ones, and us, navigate the deep waters of suffering and loss. This book is a timeless treasure to be shared with those inside the church as a guide to suffering well, and with those outside the church as a guide to knowing the one who is our only source of true and lasting hope.

Many are the afflictions of the righteous. The Lord delivers us through them all. And as sweet as the promises are that God will deliver us, going through our afflictions and not getting out of them can challenge our confidence in His goodness, wisdom, and sovereignty. In this gentle-spirited book, Dr. Tom Ascol pastorally calls us to hope in God in this vale of tears. With the precision of a theologian and the devotion of a brother, Ascol's biblical meditations and prayerful reflections remind the struggling Christian that we can be sorrowful yet always rejoicing.

After the cancer diagnosis of his sister Joy, brother Tom Ascol wrote weekly letters for one year to encourage Joy’s family and friends with the precious promises of God’s Word. Over twenty years later, we have the rare privilege of reading these tender, Christ-centered, and moving letters for our own Bible memorization and devotional lives—each of which breathe with realism in the crucible of suffering alongside optimism that the world cannot know. Above all, Joy’s life shows that those who live and die in the Lord are truly blessed (Phil. 1:21; Rev. 14:13). I trust that the Lord will richly bless these letters for the comfort, encouragement, and endurance of many of His children in the midst of suffering as well as for stirring up holy jealousy in the hearts of the unsaved for the portion that belongs to God’s people, which in turn, may press them on to seek and find salvation for their own souls by the Spirit’s grace.

This is holy ground. We are invited to a family pilgrimage of affirming the goodness of God, the power of His Word, and the vital reality of prayer as they experienced together the road to death of Joy—beloved wife, mother, sister, daughter. This journey, now more than two decades ago, was fueled with strength and energy in each next step by familial Scripture memory, exposition of the context of the memory verse, and a prayer based on the verse. We learn of the inception of the killing cancer, the agreement to journey together in the context of revealed truth, experiences week by week of Joy's brave and trusting journey, the decline, the death, and the victory of such a death. We read the sermon Tom Ascol preached at the funeral. We can see that in Christ death is stingless. This was not conceived as an academic work or projected as a volume of devotions for the public. It is grippingly existential in the most spiritually and edifyingly provocative way. Their journey becomes ours and elicits the unerring exclamation, ‘If God be for us, who can be against us?’

Every family needs this book. Suffering with Joy will give you the scriptures that you and your loved ones need when walking through heartrending trials—and especially with those who are dying. When sorrows run deep, you need a deeper well of wisdom to carry you through. This book plunges you into that well. Help your kids prepare for the trials ahead with the scriptures Tom prepared for his sister. Memorize the flagship verses that head each chapter with your family. This book is a shepherd’s staff written by a true shepherd. As I read these pages, it was plain to me that the author himself has been comforted by the same means through which he comforts others in their time of need.

In this volume, developed from a time of deep suffering within his own extended family, Tom Ascol has to the world given a gift—practical spiritual disciplines to help the reader lay hold of divine resources during life’s trials. His own reflections on Scripture and suggested prayers, as well as apt quotes from our church forefathers, demonstrate how we can better draw near to Christ in times of fear and pain. Both a person suffering and one ministering to a sufferer will find page after page of deep wisdom and comfort drawn from the only source where one may find them—the Bible. I wish I had had Suffering with Joy on hand in the past to give to friends who were walking through difficult times, but I’m grateful I’ll be able to bless them with it in the future.

This book is one of the most edifying and encouraging books I have ever read. It is a compilation of forty-four letters (plus funeral sermon) that Tom Ascol wrote to the entire family during his sister Joy Dyer’s trial with and death from cancer. Providing Scripture memory from some of Joy’s favorite verses in each letter, Tom expounded each Scripture to encourage Joy, her husband Dean, and the rest of the family. The result is Christ-centered, theologically sound, and edifying application of the gospel to the joys and trials of Joy’s journey each step along her way to death, which was but her entrance into glory with Christ. It could be used as a devotional reading even beyond those who struggle with illness. It could be edifying to the pastor how to instruct and encourage his people in their multicolored trials. Tom’s integration of sound interpretation of these wonderful verses with practical application of their truth to Joy and the family is an example of how a Christian should always think as well as when facing life’s upheavals. Give this book to those in all kinds of trial. Give this book to the aging Christian who faces his/her mortality. Give this book to all kinds of Christians as an example of living a Christ-centered life by faith each day. They will thank you. But first, read it for yourself, and you will want to share it with those you care for. Thank you, Tom!