You speak of compensation, and rightly so, for you have suffered harm. Yet take the greatest care that a thirst for earthly recompense from this landlord does not become a snare to your own soul. The testimony of a clear conscience, maintaining simplicity and godly sincerity even when wronged, is a far greater glorying than any money recovered. If you nurse a grievance until it becomes a demand for payment, you risk exchanging your inner peace for a paltry sum, sparing your money but being unsparing of your own soul. Does not a bright conscience, rejoicing in doing what is right, afford a consolation no sum of gold can match?
Consider this. To be afflicted unjustly and yet to give thanks, this is true philosophy and a mark of the highest Christian nobility. When your circumstances cry out for you to blaspheme, to exclaim discontentedly against a hard-hearted landlord, and instead you give thanks to God, you accomplish a mighty deed. You rejoice God. You shame the devil, who is the real author of this conflict, and he departs from you. You even make the suffering itself to be as nothing, for the soul that is thankful and bright within cannot long be sad. But if you cry out only for your rights and are embittered, the devil stands by, having gained his wish, and your calamity is only heightened. Which do you desire more: the landlord’s money, which moth and rust corrupt, or this swift deliverance and spiritual victory?
You pray for a stirring of his conscience, and this is a right petition, for God’s long-suffering is meant to lead him to repentance. But understand what true repentance is. Do not think it is a mere pang of regret, a fear of consequences, or a temporary shame. Esau sought a change of his father’s mind with a torrent of tears, yet found no place for true repentance, for his heart was set on murdering Jacob as soon as the moment of grief had passed. Many a man, when his conscience plucks at him, pretends not to know, lest he be tortured, and so he grows even more resolute in wickedness. Pray not just that the landlord feels a fleeting remorse, but that the Holy Spirit grants him a true and lasting change of heart that produces the fruit of just restitution. If he does not, then know that his very hard-heartedness, like Pharaoh’s, is fitting him for destruction, while God’s long-suffering with him becomes the background against which your own patient endurance shines forth.
If, after a month, there is no communication and no remorse, do not despair as though God does not see. The silence of the oppressor is not the silence of God. The very delay that fills you with anxiety is God’s long-suffering, giving space for repentance. But if the landlord will not use this space for amendment, then his refusal only stores up a more fearful judgment for himself. Do not make God’s patience a plea for your own vexation. Instead, entrust vengeance and recompense to the tribunal which the conscience and the Lord Himself will supply. Your glorying is the testimony of your conscience that you have not returned evil for evil. This is your enduring possession, which no landlord’s threats can seize. Let the pain of this trial turn your eyes not to his bank account, but to your own soul’s preparation for the age to come. In this, you become a companion of the Apostles who rejoiced to be counted worthy to suffer shame. And what your landlord owes you, that debt is recorded not in an earthly court ledger, but in the unerring books of heaven.
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. 
