Consider what that verse actually promises. The life that must be lost is not the landlord's right to collect rent or his authority over the property. Those things are small. The life that must be lost is his old self: his pride, his self-will, his trust in his own judgment, his grip on whatever he thinks he owns. If he holds onto that life, he will indeed lose himself. But if he lets go of that old man and surrenders to Christ, then for the first time he will truly live. That is the paradox we are praying toward.
So we do not pray that the man merely becomes easy to deal with, or that he drops the dispute because it is no longer worth his trouble. We pray that the mercy of God falls on him so heavily that he comes to see the ruin of his own soul. We pray that the very thing he is fighting to hold onto becomes, in God's hands, the instrument of his undoing, so that he finally loosens his grip and reaches for Christ instead. The apartment situation is not the real battle. The real battle is for one immortal soul who, as things stand, is winning a victory that will destroy him. Saint Paul speaks of being weighed down beyond his own power, and it was in that exact place of helplessness that God's deliverance appeared. We may ask for that same weight to press upon this landlord, not for his destruction but for his salvation.
Do not seek a visible victory over him as if he were your enemy. If he does not yet know Christ, he is a captive, not an opponent. You are not asking God to defeat him but to rescue him from the darkness that currently holds him. That is a very different prayer. You may think you are losing the struggle over the apartment, but if you bear that loss with patience and self-command, you have the crown. The crown is not the lease. The crown is that you continue to love and pray for the one who wrongs you.
Remember also that no one is beyond the hope of conversion. A man may hear the word ten times and seem completely unmoved, and then at the eleventh hearing, the whole tree falls at once. The ten earlier blows were not wasted. They were weakening the root. Your prayers are those blows. Do not stop because you see no immediate fruit. Keep asking, not merely that the situation improves, but that the man himself is born again, that he becomes a brother in Christ, that his soul is plucked from the fire.
When you declare victory, let it be a victory of light over the darkness that holds him, not a victory of your side over his. Pray that the ex-landlord loses his old life entirely, and pray that you have the humility to accept whatever earthly inconvenience that requires of you. God's power is not chiefly shown in solving a rental dispute. It is shown in transforming a heart that was hard into one that is broken and contrite. That is what we ask. And when it happens, everyone who sees it will have to confess that no one can withstand the mighty power of God, because the proud man will have laid down his weapons at the feet of Christ.
So keep praying, but let the center of the prayer be this: Lord, by any affliction you choose, by any loss of property or pride, bring this man to the point where he stops trying to save his life and instead loses it for your sake. Do not let him keep his life and lose his soul. And for those who are praying, teach them to bear wrongs without returning evil, so that their patient endurance becomes a witness of the very grace they are asking for him. 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. 
