How can parents make Sunday the best day of the week for their children, especially when it comes to going to church?

In this video, Tom Ascol emphasizes the importance of enjoying the duties and responsibilities that God has called us to do. He specifically focuses on the Lord's Day, which is often a difficult day for parents as children often do not want to go to church. Ascol encourages parents to make Sunday the best day of the week by helping their children understand the great privilege and responsibility of worshipping God and being with His people. 

Ascol offers practical tips for parents to prepare for Sunday, such as laying out the clothes for their children on Saturday evening to avoid last-minute chaos on Sunday morning. He also encourages parents to practice family worship at home, teaching their children how to be reverent, sing, and participate in the service. As children learn to enjoy worshipping God and being with His people, they can come to embrace the great privilege and responsibility that they have to live a life in accordance with the ways of Jesus Christ.

In summary, Ascol's message is a call to parents to make Sunday the best day of the week for their children by embracing the joy and privilege of worshipping God and being with His people. This can be achieved by making church an exciting thing to look forward to, by practicing family worship at home, by serving others, and by praying for our church and our pastor.

"Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord your God. In it you shall not do any work, you, nor your son, nor your daughter, your manservant, nor your maidservant, nor your cattle, nor your stranger who is within your gates. For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it." - Exodus 20:8-11 (NKJV)

So, we need to avoid setting up the things that God's called us to be and do as if they are some kind of joyless duty. But rather, even when the duty doesn't seem to be coming to us with much joy, we need to remind ourselves that we should be enjoying this and the fact that we're not is a problem in us, not in what God's called us to be or do and not in God himself. Now this particularly rolls around every week when it comes to the Lord's Day, preparation for the Lord's Day and going to be with God's people on the Lord's Day. I've heard it said by many, many parents that Sunday is the most difficult day of the week for them and the most troubling day for some families as well because children don't want to go to church. And what I would encourage parents to do is make Sunday the best day of the week.

It is that for us. The Puritans regarded it as the market day of the soul. Our children aren't going to understand that in their early years, but they will understand perhaps special Lord's Day cookies or special Lord's Day games or special Lord's Day activities that they only get to do on Sundays and to make church an exciting thing that we look forward to being with God's people. Isn't God good to us to call us together one day out of seven every week to come and sing and worship Him and to be with His people our brothers and sisters those people who love you love us that we love as well Practical things can help with this like making sure your preparations are done on Saturday. My wife used to lay out all the clothes of the children on the couch in our living room on Saturday evenings so that nobody was running around looking for a shoe or looking for a shirt on Sunday morning.

Everything was taken care of practically on Sunday evening. You can also practice in your home what it means to worship, to sit still, to be reverent, to sing, to pray. A two-year-old and a three-year-old isn't going to be able to do that on his or her own. They're not going to be able to do it for extended lengths of time, but the more that you practice family worship and you go through those motions and you help your children realize, yes, they can sit quietly. Yes, they can sing.

They can participate in some ways in the service. The better that service on Sunday is going to go for them. And help them look forward to it. Help them to love people. Think of ways you can serve the people that you are around on the Lord's Day, how you can bless them.

Pray for your church. Pray for your pastor, for the teachers, for the people that you know that your children will see on the Lord's Day. And get your children praying for them as well. As you do these things, you can help shape your children's attitudes toward worship. You can help them come to embrace the responsibility and the great privilege that they have to live a life in accordance with the ways of Jesus Christ.

And if we do that, then we are putting them on the right path and we can pray that the Lord will own all of the means that he's entrusted to us that we are trying to implement in the way we bring our children up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord that God will own those means and bring them to a saving faith in Christ early in their lives. You