Bible Verses for Pain and What to Do With Disappointment That Doesn't Make Sense

Pain doesn't need an explanation to hurt. But Scripture doesn't leave it unexplained either and the harder question isn't why pain happens, it's what you do with it while it's happening.

Pain is disappointment

Mickey frames it simply:

"What pain means to me is disappointment."

A death, a loss, a relationship that didn't hold, underneath all of it is the gap between what you expected and what actually happened.

Getting choked out in the first round

Blake describes the worst professional loss of his MMA career. He spent months of 4:30 a.m. training, a full team behind him, walking out to worship music feeling like he couldn't lose. But he got caught in a choke hold at the end of the first round.

"I felt like I let not only myself down, I felt like I let down my team, I felt like I let down my wife."

For a fighter, a loss isn't like losing a football game with another game next week. For some guys, one or two losses is the end of a career. In the locker room afterward, a teammate named Bryce Warner put his arm around him and said the thing that actually reframed it:

"If God wanted you to win that fight, you would have won that fight."

Blake's honest reaction, looking back:

"What I really realized in that moment was how selfish I was being. In defeat, I didn't want to think that it was God's hand. I was mad at myself, I wanted to put everything on myself."

Pain, he says, makes you turn inward. It centers you on yourself exactly when you need people around you most.

The friends who said no

Mickey's own low point came during a financial crash, three businesses hit at once, on top of losing his mother. He asked three close friends for a small loan to bridge him to a closing. Each one said no. Friends he'd done much larger favors for in the past.

"When the third one said no, I was done with friends."

His sister's response is the part worth sitting with:

"You have your expectations for your friends too high. If you lower your expectations to reality, then you won't feel that great of disappointment. The gap between your expectations and the reality is the gap of disappointment that you feel."

She'd said it having lost her own son and wishing she could be at the level of faith without losing him.

"The sufferings of this present time"

"For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us." — Romans 8:18

This isn't a promise that pain disappears, it's a promise that it isn't wasted. Mickey ties it to the idea that God can't use someone greatly until He's broken them greatly, pointing to Jesus in Gethsemane asking for the cup to be taken from him and then not taking the way out he had available.

Running the race

"Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, and only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it... I do not run aimlessly. I do not box as one beating the air. But I discipline my body and keep it under control." — 1 Corinthians 9:24-27

Blake connects this to something he'd heard about Navy SEAL training. The men who quit are often the ones most fixated on knowing when it ends. The ones who make it through don't know the timeline; they just know it's happening now. Pain works the same way. Knowing there's an end doesn't remove the pain, but it changes what you're able to carry.

Sometimes the answer is just showing up

Blake's clearest example isn't a mentor with the right words, it's a college teammate who had never lost a family member and had nothing to offer but honesty.

"I've never lost a family member, all my grandparents are still alive. I don't know how you feel, but I'm for you. We can talk."

Years later, that same friend called Blake after losing someone to suicide, asking for the same thing back.

"Sometimes all we need around us in the time of pain is just somebody to sit there and be in that pain with us."

If this is you

If you're carrying disappointment that doesn't have an answer yet, you're not failing at faith, you're in the part of it that's actually hard. Write down where you actually are, and join the community at The LifeLine Tool. Watch Mickey and Blake talk through this in full on The LifeLine Radio Show → BIBLE VERSES FOR PAIN | TRUSTING GOD THROUGH THE PAIN ---

Full conversation transcript

Blake: We're back in the studio, let's talk about pain. Mickey: What pain means to me is disappointment. If you just look at that word disappointment, and then you're disappointed in someone's death, you're disappointed in a loss, you're disappointed in a relationship, so all of it is about disappointment. So in your life, what has happened to you that has created that disappointment that creates that emotional pain? Blake: For me personally, you last week I touched on it, but the most pain I ever felt in my life was in my life and I had a miscarriage last year. But, you know, more immediate kind right now, as you know, I lost my last name in my fight, and you spend months getting ready, you know, the 4:30 in the morning, alarm goes off, you're kicking the sheets off, running to the gym, getting ready, and then every night getting in gym, rolling, doing jiu-jitsu, kickboxing, it's one night, everything's on the line, and I wound up getting caught in choke, and after that, you put all that work into it, you feel just disappointed. Blake: So let me paint a picture of the pre-fight, right? So I'm in my locker room, I get my whole team together, we're warm, I'm already hitting mitts, I'm ready, get my whole team together, we say prayer together, I walk out to worship music, and honestly I felt like everything in my life, how could I lose this fight? I walked in the cage, and I felt like I was winning the fight, and I just got caught in a choke at the end of the first round and I felt so much disappointment but also, this felt like this wasn't supposed to happen. And I put every ounce of work I could in towards this and I was winning the fight, and then I just got caught at the end and I didn't get the result. And when you walk back to the locker room, you feel so disappointed. I feel like I let not only myself down, I felt like I let down my team, I like I let down my wife, and my friends are in the crowd. They drove all the way to Kentucky to watch me fight, and I lost in a way that was almost anticlimactic. And so I felt like it was the lowest of low losing a fight. It's not like losing a football game. Losing a football game, we got a game next week, or put the pads on, even if you lose in the playoffs, you got a game next season, or somebody's playing next year. You lose a fight, for some guys, that's retirement, in professional MMA, a couple of losses, and that's the end of your career. And so, I go back to the locker room and start talking to my team, and I'm apologizing, they're saying there's no need for an apology, and deep down you still feel like you let everybody down. But then, you know, the next morning you wake up, and it's another day, and you're still breathing, and we're still here, and I go back to Nashville, and we get back, and everything gets settled, and I'm right back to training, and I'm right back to talking to my manager about the next fight, and you just keep rolling. And so I spend time on the Word, and actually a funny story coming out of this is in the locker room, in my first professional loss, and I'm sitting in the locker room just kicking myself, apologizing to my team. One of my teammates, Bryce Warner, who walked over and put his arm around me, said, if God wanted you to win that fight, you would have won that fight. That was his first reaction. It was my first professional loss, probably the lowest low I've had in a professional sports career and the first thing I hear is “if you were supposed to win, you would have won.” And Bryce, to his credit, is one the strongest men I know, and sadly he actually lost that night too, and you wouldn't think it from the way that, that is genuinely the way he feels. Even for himself, even for other teammates, for other guys that had lost, he's somebody you can lean on. And having people like that around you, I think it's so important in that kind of thing. You know, an interesting part is that when Bryce came over and put his arm around me, what I really realized in that moment was how selfish I was being. It was in defeat, I didn't want to think that it was a God's hand. I was at myself, I wanted to put everything on myself, and Bryce coming over and talking, and he really refocused me, and made me see that there's so much bigger things out there than an MMA fight. And if we're truly men of God, we're of faith, then in that moment, we need to still rejoice and have thanksgiving that he's the one that is guiding us. And I think that's kind of the moral of that night, where I realized how selfish we get in pain. Pain will make us very self-centered in a hard time. Mickey: Wow. And mean, wow. Because, honestly, you just said some mouthfuls. Number one, that pain turns us inward. I never thought about that, but it does. And another thing you talk about is having brothers to walk with through the pain. Well, that's what God calls us to do, is to live our life with brothers. You know, he talks about the rope, you know, the twine, and being stronger with multiple twines rather than a single one. And not living our life alone because Satan will get us. Whenever we're going through pain, and I'm sitting there thinking about myself, when I've gone through pain, that for me, what I'm guilty of doing is sliding off by myself and excluding everybody around me and dealing with pain on my own. That's not how God calls us to do it. Blake: When's the time in your life that you've dealt with pain? You've to touch on how you dealt with it, but what specifically is the time you remember dealing with it? Mickey: The most pain that I've ever felt in my life is when my mother passed away. I got a call and said she was having a problem, so I grabbed a bag and I took off down there, and I didn't think that God would ever take my mother at this particular time in my life, selfish, inward, because of all the other heartache that I was going through. It was during the crash, during some relationship problems, I called a few of my buddies that were really close to God, one cousin, called Melanie, and she's got a hotline across the United States and other parts of the world with prayer warriors. I sent it out to them and I took off and I knew that she'd be fine. And I get on my way there, and I get called and she doesn't make it, and so that is the most pain that I've ever felt in my life. And you had family, but I think that I didn't do exactly like I should have. I turned in and I dealt with it on my own. That was the most pain I've ever felt. And of course time heals everything. So if you are in the Word and you're seeking God and you have people like you had around you, I think that the pain can be shorter and less. I know it can. Because now I've done things the right way with others helping me. And then the pride that comes in. For me back then, I was already at a low point. And then that was just a swift kick. The other pain that I felt in my life, my sister said something was profound. The crash happened and I had done some favors for three particular friends. I had done each one of them a major favor in life and business. And so now I've found a place where I hate asking anybody for anything. And I had asked each one of them, said no, and the other said no, and then the third one said no. And when the third one said no, I was done with friends. Blake: What were you asking? Mickey: For a loan. I was asking them for a small loan to bridge me to get to a closing. Because I was afraid that the banks were going to pull the rug out from under me. And so I asked them for a loan and each one of them said no. Where in the past I had done things for them much greater than what I was asking. So I felt like any one of them would have said yes. Well now then I just got no and my sister called me. And she goes, "How are you doing? And I said, “not good at all.” And so I explained the story and she said something profound. She said, “Mickey, you have your expectations for your friends too high. If you lower your expectations to reality, then you won't feel that great of disappointment.” She said, “but the gap between your expectations and the reality is the gap of disappointment that you feel.” And she goes, and “then put your trust in Christ to a different level and she started crying.” And she said, “I just wish that I could be to the level of faith that I have now without losing my son.” And she had lost her son. And so that stuck with me. And so now I've realized that whenever I put my expectations in different ones other than in Christ, and put my whole faith in Christ, like she said, to the level that I can, and so a lot of times, you just can't go to the level without being broken. It's just hard to go there. The other aspect of it is brothers. Making sure you have some solid people in your life that when you're going through it, they will point you to Christ. A lot of times when you're going through it, you’ve given up. You're kind of like, I have busted my tail for all this time. And now, I've disappointed everybody. And then you have one of your brothers come up and I say, “hey, brother, it's not about you losing, God would have given you the strength to win. It’s about what’s happening today and what's going forward.” And then all of a sudden, the lights come on, you know? Blake: I think that brotherhood and community around you is so important. I mean, it's kind of like when we go back to the gym, not in a negative way, but for the next three weeks we spent all of our time at the gym as a fight team, only practicing, getting out of the submission that I got caught in. It makes you feel bad because your neck hurts when you're getting guillotined every day all day. So I feel bad our whole team had to go through it. But that was what we did because we saw that. What I appreciate about my team is guys like Bryce, Andrew, these strong men of God. Every night they come over to me. Messing with me, “thanks man, my neck’s real sore. Appreciate it.” That's the brotherhood that you get. You want to have people that are messing with you because we have that relationship. Because they were there for that night. But now it's something we laugh about but also get better and learn through and work through. I think that's so important. But you know, on that note, we worship God. We spend our time in Word. But yet you still see Christians each day they're going through pain. Why if He has total control and He has our best, He wants our best. Why do people go through this? Mickey: What comes to mind is Chuck Swindoll. When I first started my hunger for Scripture in the early 90s, I listened to Chuck Swindoll. And so he did all these stories from David and Joseph and Moses. And so he did a story on each one of them. And loved all of them. Chuck Swindoll would say that God can't use you greatly until he has broken you greatly. I think God allows you to go through brokenness that he can fix in a blind of an eye. And then what it reminds me of is Jesus in the garden, and he goes to God and he says, let this cup be taken from me, and then he goes and finds his brothers asleep, and he goes back the second time and he goes, if it's will, let this cup be removed from me, but if it's not, and then Jesus could have been on the cross, he literally had thousands of angels that he could have called down, and he could have off the cross, and then he could have lived his life apart from the pain and apart from the brokenness. He was broken for us, but he did that for us, that he came from heaven to earth to become man, to live a perfect life, to die on the cross, that by his sacrifice, in order to pay the price for our sin. If Christ did that for us to live eternal life, then for us to feel like that he needs to eliminate all our pain in our life, then that's even more selfish than becoming inward. Do you follow me? Blake: You know, what comes to mind off of that is the way a lot of disciples died. They died talking about Jesus, and more specifically the way Peter died. You know, they brought in and for his claims about Jesus and for him preaching the gospel, they decided to crucify him, and off of his request, they crucified him upside down because he didn't see it fit for him to die the same way that Jesus Christ died. I think that is a much better picture of today, that, you kind of like what we touch on of pain and suffering makes you so selfish, but to be selfless, and to say, you we should be so lucky to even consider our suffering in anything like what Jesus went through. He doesn't owe us a thing here on this Earth. Blake: Romans 8:18, “For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us.” Mickey: So that just gives us a glimpse of whenever we're going through pain, and go to the scripture, and know that God has us in his hand and is developing us, but then if we are focusing our eyes on what he's got for us eternity, then it makes it all worthwhile. Blake: Absolutely. I think there's so much pain that can go through if you know the end. It's kind of like whenever they talk about Navy SEALs that quit in SEAL training, they’re the guys that on purpose, they don't tell them necessarily how long it's going to be or how long it's going to last, they just know that it’s going to last for right now. And those guys that tap out are the ones that are probably more concerned with knowing when the end will be. You see that all the time. You see that the people who know last spring, coming from football and coming from training, whenever you're training with your team and your coach announces “this is the last sprint,” you find out who’s still got some gas in the tank. And for a lot of the coaches I played for, that was their pet peeve was whenever you would do sprints or conditioning and then the last sprint, somebody runs faster than they ran anytime until now, “what has all this been for, you haven't been pushing yourself.” I think that kind of ties the pain of we do have an end to whatever you're going through. Someday we're going to be in glory where there is no pain and there is no suffering. And so if we know that at the end, you can suffer for a long time. Mickey: So if you live long enough, you're going to experience pain. When you experience this pain, and you believe what the Bible says, then you begin understanding that what you're going through is worth it. Going through this pain reminds me of the Scripture that Paul gives us in Corinthians. And it talks about running the race. Read that for us, would you please? Blake: Absolutely. It's 1 Corinthians 9:24-27. Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, and only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it. Every athlete exercises self-control in all things. They do not receive a perishable wreath, but we are imperishable. So I do not run aimlessly. I do not box as one being in the air. But I discipline my body and keep it under control. Lest after preaching to others, I myself should be disqualified. Mickey: Praise God. Now, is that not a mouthful? You don't go out there in the ring to beat the air. You're practicing to make connections. That's what we live in our lives for Christ is. It's to be used for His glory. And so, whenever we're going through this, we're beating ourselves up. The pain is getting us in shape to be prepared for something else. So whenever we change our paradigm in the way that we think about pain, then we can think about it in a way that it hurts. It doesn't feel good. I am disappointed. But God, use this to build me just like Paul said, so that I can win the race. I'm not wanting to just be in fourth or fifth place, I want to win the race, and he's talking about the eternal life being the prize. Blake: Pain's inevitable, we're all going to deal with pain. For my fight, I knew that I was going to go in there and hopefully win, came out to worship music, and afterwards, I still had that moment of being selfish. How do we prepare ourselves for pain in our daily walk, to get ready to experience that pain and still walk in hand with Jesus? Mickey: I think that surrounding yourself with strong mentors is a key to living our life whenever the pain happens, because those people have experienced pain. Blake: You know, I don't think that people necessarily have to be in a mental role in your life to speak into it. I think, you know, sometimes we can get that community and get that almost healing through someone that’s a peer, somebody that you spend every day with, somebody you go to lunch with once a month. You know, specifically, it reminds me of a story of a teammate that I was playing college football with. I had opened up to him about dealing with some hard times with depression and just kind of being down, and he gave me some of the best words I've had from someone that had never dealt with anything. So I was dealing with trouble from dealing with family members that have passed and relationships and things, and he looked at and very flat out told me that, “I've never lost a family member, all my grandparents are still alive. I don't know how you feel, but I'm for you. We can talk.” And to be honest, that was kind of all I needed at that moment, and I didn't feel alone, and it kind of pulled me out of that. Fast forward a few years, I got a call, the same guy called me, and he said, “I just had a very close friend commit suicide, and I don't know how to deal with what I'm dealing with right now. Can you be there for me?” It was a no-brainer for me to be there and be that same comfort he was for me when he had nothing to say. And so I say that more of, whenever we're around people, we're doing life together, and you have that community, it doesn't necessarily have to be, “I’ve dealt with that exactly, let me speak into your life.” Sometimes all we need around us in the time of pain is just somebody to sit there and be in that pain with us. And sometimes that is a sense of community that can bring you out of pain. It's just someone leveling with you and being there. So sometimes just finding someone that's in pain, you don't have to have answers, you don't have to have the perfect recipe to get out of whatever they’re in. Sometimes it’s just sitting there and saying, “Yeah.” Mickey: Whenever you start losing hope, it’s like falling off a cliff and right as you're fixing to go to a thousand foot drop and die, you reach up and grab a branch, just a little bitty branch, that's all you need, just a little bitty branch, just don't lose hope if you've got just a little bitty branch then all of a sudden you get a little bit further up on the branch. And then you climb out. Then all of a sudden somebody sees you and they help you a little bit. And that's what losing hope is is like going over the cliff and that's what I would like for lifeline to be is that branch that throws over for you to grab a hold of, and then you hold on until God brings you back up and you're off and running. Blake: Guys, to close out, we want to go to Psalm 34:18-19. “The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit. Many are the affiliations of the righteous, but the Lord delivers them out of them all.” That’s what the lifeline is here for. It’s here to meet you right where you are, so whatever you're going through, go to lifelinetool.com, it's free, it's confidential, you can go in there and leave us a message, we'd love to begin praying for you today. Mickey: Alright, let’s bow our heads. Heavenly Father, we love you. Lord, how we thank you for the life that you’ve given us. Heavenly Father we come to you and we prepare ourselves to come to you. But Lord, like in the Old Testament, they had to come into the temple to be into your presence. But Lord, we praise you today that Lord, that your presence is with us always through the Holy Spirit and were grateful and were thankful for that. We truly have the Spirit living in us, that's we believe, that's our faith is holding on to. So today, as we prepare ourselves to talk to you Lord, we clear our minds, we take out all our phone calls, all the people that are pursuing us, and the things that we need to do, and our desires in this life, and we just clear them out, we wipe them off, we just clear the board, and we come to you first and foremost telling you that we're grateful, oh God were grateful. Thank you Lord, thank you for this life, and we come to you Lord confessing that we're sinners, and some of us have addiction problems, or drugs, uh Lord, all sorts of things. So Lord, come to you confessing that we're sinners. We're grateful that you paid for all those sins. And Lord, we truly want to be better tomorrow than we are today. So we live our life for repentance. Lord, today we're asking you to be more real than we've ever had you be before. Lord, with this group of people, we talk about a subject that is so huge to me of suicide. Heavenly Father, I pray for all the ones that are hearing this prayer, the millions that aren't hearing it. Lord, pray over them right now that your spirit can touch them now. Lord, I pray that you empower your angels to go and give them peace. Lord, to give them hope that they can truly make it through these times, and look back at it so that they can then start helping others to get through it. And then, Lord, it will be a revival across our country and across our world. We love you, Lord. We pray for all the families, the ones that are listening to this. Lord, that you cover them. I pray that your blood is enough to recover everyone's sin, so that everyone has a chance to know you as their Savior and their friend. Thank you again, Lord, for this day. Thank you for this time together. And Lord, that would bless it. And Lord, that you would get the glory. All the glory. We pray these things in Jesus' name. And for his blood's sake, we have the connection with Father God. Amen.