She was a woman in constant demand. Pastors from the US praised her for her importance to Spurgeon’s church. Women from across the world wrote to her for advice in their own endeavours. Even in semi-retirement, men begged her to speak to women at their churches.

The streets of London were at a standstill.
Thousands crowded the streets to say goodbye to a dearly loved teacher. The Metropolitan Tabernacle was too full to hold the mourners.
Charles Spurgeon the following Sunday said this: “I have this day lost from my side one of the most faithful fervent, and efficient of my helpers, and the Church has lost one of her most useful members.”
Who was this faithful helper?
Mrs. Lavinia Strickland Bartlett.
Who was Lavinia? And what made her such a valued fellow servant of the great Charles Spurgeon?
Frequently, in history women’s stories remain untold. But such was her fame that Lavinia’s story was recorded by her son Edward H. Bartlett. It’s hard to find today but in this article I will give a quick overview of her life.
So set aside a few minutes to read a brief summary of her amazing story and what we can learn from her life.

Even at an early age, Lavinia showed the heart of an evangelist.

She read hymns to her her younger brothers before bed.
In her teens, she taught the “preaching, praying class” at Sunday school.
She even set up a school for girls.

But in her town, she was best known as “the praying girl.”
Their local parson failed to care for his flock. So for a time, a dissenting deacon “Pattern Wade” was called to death beds to support those in need.
However, eventually Pattern Wade was called home. He was soon replaced by Lavinia. Her son describes how she prayed with “harlots, poachers, burglars and prizefighters…at all hours of the day and night.” She walked miles and miles to visit those in need.
One story demonstrates her character. In the town was a horse breaker, the father of one of the members of her Sunday School. He was opposed to Christianity and boasted that he’d entered church twice in his life: when his mother took him to be Christened and when his wife took him to be married.
On his death bed, he refused to see any clergyman, even shouting them out of the house. A butcher friend encouraged him to see “the praying girl.”
Lavinia arrived and gave “a simple appeal to the love of Christ”. Amazingly, the man was soon in tears. He trusted Jesus and was soon ushered into eternal life.
The Praying Mother

But as a result of this, the “praying girl” became the “praying mother”. She devoted herself to her sons. Their father died when the boys were teenagers but she took upon herself to raise them in the Lord.
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We wish to shape people who love others in living, face-to-face relationships. Relationships do not thrive when characterised by exhibitionism, voyeurism, envy, boasting or gossip. Further, people who wish to escape to where they can live vicariously through their ‘digital presence’ are retreating from real relationships.

We are often lost because we do not know our destination. Unless we know where we want to go, we may not know whether we are progressing or regressing.
When it comes to parenting our children in a digital age, it will not be enough to simply react to the latest Disney LGBTQ propaganda, or forbid our children from using a particular app, once we hear of how it is abused. These responses are merely reactive, and do not look ahead to where we wish to go. Furthermore, like frogs in a pot, we may be acclimatising to what is bad for us, and tolerating all kinds of things that are spiritually toxic for our children. Judging technology and its dangers by the current fad or danger is like judging traffic from your car’s dashboard. You will see some dangers, but you need an aerial view to really understand what is going on.
We must begin by asking, what sort of disciples are we trying to make? What is essential to the makeup of a healthy, mature disciple? We can then proceed to ask, how do our technologies help or harm? Let me suggest seven qualities of a worshipping disciple.
1. We wish to shape people who can admire and adore through intense and sustained attention. The Christian life is one in which God is revealed for our admiring attention. But He is revealed to us in ways that require concentration, focus, and the prolonged gaze of the soul. A worshipper understands he presents a sacrifice of praise to God: his costly attention, admiration, focus, and desire.
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They come in varieties. Further, while some toxic people seem to have mastered holistically the dark art of toxicity, most toxic people are not quite so skilled; they have mastered selected aspects of toxicity and combined them with their natural personalities. Thus, here we profile seven notable subspecies who can be spotted on the terrain of our lives.

Author Robert Tew once wrote, “Don’t let negative and toxic people rent space in your head. Raise the rent and kick them out.” And he’s right; his modern proverb expresses well the way Jesus and other biblical exemplars such as Nehemiah treated toxic people. Thus, the first installment of this series focused briefly on the life of Jesus and revealed that Jesus walked away from toxic people. He refused to entrust himself to people who could not be trusted.
So if, like Jesus, we determine to walk away when necessary, we must be able to identify who is toxic to us and who is not. After all, we are not omniscient as Jesus was. Yet, there are some clear and identifiable signs of toxicity. Indeed, in the last installment, we enumerated ten signs that a given person behaving in a toxic manner toward us. Building on that post, this installment will make an analogy between toxic people and exotic species of wildlife. We will draw upon the ten signs from the last post, and for amusement’s sake, will compare each type of toxic profile to a “subspecies” of wildlife.
Not every subspecies of toxic wildlife is created equally. They come in varieties. Further, while some toxic people seem to have mastered holistically the dark art of toxicity, most toxic people are not quite so skilled; they have mastered selected aspects of toxicity and combined them with their natural personalities. Thus, here we profile seven notable subspecies who can be spotted on the terrain of our lives:
1. The Palavering Peacock: Have you ever met somebody who manages to turn any conversation toward himself or herself, sucking any available “air” out of the room? And if he is unable to get people to talk him or his chosen topic, he gets bored with the conversation and walks away? If so, you’ve encountered a distinctive sub-species of TP—the Palavering Peacock. These conversational hijackers prefer to feed on Large Group Lillies and Small Group Spruce, although when starved they have been known to graze on Single Person Sunflowers.
2. The Micromanaging Malapert: Do you know somebody who wants to control everybody and everything around them, even down to the small stuff? Somebody who suffocates you? If so, you have probably gotten a whiff or two of these control freaks—the Micromanaging Malapert—a TP sub-species whose preferred habitat is the Passive Person Plains but who is known to migrate quickly toward prey in any environment.
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