Suffering with Joy: Letters on Tragedy, Loss, and Hope

Author:

Tom Ascol has served as a Pastor of Grace Baptist Church in Cape Coral, FL since 1986. He has a BS degree in sociology from Texas A&M University and has earned the MDiv and PhD degrees from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. Tom serves as the President of Founders Ministries and The Institute of Public Theology. He has served as an adjunct professor of theology for various colleges and seminaries and has written hundreds of articles for various journals and magazines. Tom regularly preaches and lectures at various conferences throughout the United States and other countries. In addition, he edited and contributed to several books over the years and hosts a weekly podcast called The Sword & The Trowel. He and his wife Donna have six children along with four sons-in-law and a daughter-in-law. They have eighteen grandchildren.

Endorsements:

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.
--Dr. Joel R. Beeke, Chancellor and Professor of Systematic Theology and Homiletics, Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary Pastor of Heritage Reformed Congregation, Grand Rapids, Michigan

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?'
--Dr. Tom J. Nettles, Retired Professor of Historical Theology, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary

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!
--Dr. Fred Malone, Pastor Emeritus First Baptist Church, Clinton, Louisiana