You are carrying a weight upon your heart, and I can feel it even as I set these words before you. It is a strange and wonderful thing, this burden you bear, not for yourself, not for your own pressing need, though you have an apartment situation that might easily consume your thoughts, but for a man who holds the keys to your dwelling, yet may not know the One who holds the keys to his very soul. You are praying for your landlord. That is a Christ-like ache, and it tells me something of the Spirit’s work within you.
Now, think for a moment how the matter stands. You and I, and every soul beneath the sun, are tenants. We dwell in houses of clay, but the freehold belongs to Another. Your landlord may own the title to those rooms, yet the breath in his lungs is borrowed, the beating of his heart is sustained by a hand he may never have acknowledged. He is God’s property, fashioned by the Divine skill, every sinew and nerve bearing the marks of the great Embroiderer. You are praying that he would wake up to this, that he would see he is not his own landlord, but a man who must give an account to the Maker of all. And this is the very mercy of it: you are not asking for a hard thing. You are asking that he would lose what he cannot keep, to gain what he cannot lose.
Your verse, Luke 9:24, cuts right to the heart of it. A man may clutch his life as a miser grips his coin, and in the clutching he crushes the very thing he means to preserve. But to let go, to open the hand and yield it all to Christ, that is to find it, truly and forever. What you are praying is the kindest prayer a tenant ever breathed for a landlord: that this man would release his grip on his own little kingdom and receive a Kingdom that cannot be shaken.
I want you to see the goodness of the salvation you are asking for him. The gospel is not a bare rescue from penalty; it is a feast. It is milk for the weak and wine for the strong, everything the soul truly craves. There is in Christ a deliverance from the guilt that lies heavy on the conscience, but there is also a breaking of the power of sin, those habits and passions that bind a man and make him miserable even when he will not admit it. And there is, beyond that, a shelter from the coming wrath, a place of safety under the shadow of the Almighty. You are not asking your landlord to join a dreary company of the grim-faced religious; you are asking him to come home to joy.
I know it may seem a great thing, a mountain too high. But remember, the Lord Jesus taught His church from the beginning that we are to hope for households. The Philippian jailer was not saved alone; his whole family came with him into the kingdom. God has a way of working through one person’s faith to touch those connected to them, even through a tenancy, even through a lease. You have been placed in that apartment not by accident, but by the appointment of Him who sets the bounds of our habitation. And you are praying in the right spirit when you declare that the light of Christ expels all darkness. You are not battling against flesh and blood; you are asking the conquering King to ride forth in this man’s life and claim what is rightfully His own.
Do not lose heart, then. The salvation you beg for him is a common salvation in the sense that it is wide enough for all, yet it is applied to each heart by the particular work of the Spirit. I would have you keep on pleading, keep on hoping, keep on trusting that the Lord who drew you will draw him also. You are not spitting into the wind. You are lifting a soul before the throne of the Eternal, and there is a power in that intercession that we shall only understand when we stand in the light of the last day.
Now let me speak to the Lord with you, and we will leave this dear burden in His hands together.
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Lord Jesus, we bring before You this man, this landlord, who holds keys that open only an earthly door but does not yet know the hand that holds the key of David. We ask in Your great name that You would cause him to lose the life that is anchored to this fading world, and in the losing to find the life that is hid with Christ in God. Shine upon him. Let the light that conquers every darkness break into the chambers of his soul. Give him no rest until he rests in You.
And for Your child who prays, we ask for patient faith. Let this apartment be a place of quiet witness, and let the peace that passes understanding garrison the heart while waiting on Your perfect timing. We thank You that You are able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think. Amen.
Prayer Focus: God, Thank You for loving me. Thank You for loving me, Jesus. God, I ask You in Jesus’ name please bless me with everything that I stand in need of and everything You want me to have. 
