One of these weekend widows met her husband at the door when he returned home from his first hunting trip of deer season and said to him, “I’m sick and tired of sitting around the house on weekends by myself. So the next time you go deer hunting I’m going with you.” That’s the last thing he wanted. And so he tried to talk her out of it. He said, “Honey, you know it gets cold out there. Sometimes we have to walk for miles and miles and sometimes you’ll sit in a deer stand all weekend and never get a single shot. You’ve never been deer hunting before and I’m not sure you would recognize a deer if you saw one.” But nothing could change her mind. She was determined to go. And so the next weekend, early in the morning he put her on the deer stand and took off down the trail to find one for himself about a mile away. And right at the break of day he heard her shoot three times in a row, ping, ping, ping. And then she started to scream. He thought, “My soul, what has happened?” He climbed down out of the tree and started to run down that trail and his mind started running away with him. He said, “I bet that this is beginner’s luck. She has probably spotted and killed the biggest buck in the whole forest.” And the farther he ran the faster he ran. And as he neared the place where she was he heard her shoot again three times, ping, ping, ping. He heard her yelling again and he came to a clearing and there stood in the middle of that clearing a tall, lanky cowboy with both hands up in the air and his wife pointing the gun at him saying, “Get away from there, that’s my deer.” And the cowboy said, “Yes, lady, but at least let me get the saddle off of him.”
The point of the story is that beginners are apt to make mistakes. And if you are a beginner in the Christian life, and some of you are, you are apt to make some mistakes.