(upbeat music) - Joseph from Atlanta writes in to ask, "Pastor John, if you were stranded on an island "and had to choose only three books to take, "which ones would you choose?" - I never know how to answer a question like this, but everybody knows the first one. I would take the Bible.

I cannot live without the word of God, and though I have enough of it stored up in my mind, maybe to survive, I don't want to just survive. So I would take a Bible, and then I would cheat and ask, can I take the collected works of Jonathan Edwards?

- Well, that depends now if it's the Banner of Truth or the Yale edition. - I would take the Yale. - Okay, yeah, that's totally cheating. - Yeah, okay, it's cheating. Then if I had to pick an Edwards, I would take the Religious Affections. And I would take them because they had a huge impact on me years ago, and because they are such a deeply convicting analysis of the human soul and how to describe the godly soul, and I know I would want to be godly on this island.

And I'm gonna surprise everybody with the last one. If I had to throw them in a suitcase right now, and tomorrow it may be different, I would throw in Richard Baxter's A Christian Directory because it's 900 double-column pages of biblical analysis of the Christian life and all of its challenges of every possible kind.

It's a, Tim Keller has on the front of the book this statement, "The greatest manual "on biblical counseling ever produced." Okay, that should be enough for everybody. And Jay Eipacker wrote the foreword for this reissue of the book and calls it stunning things as well. So a book that just canvases the whole of the Christian life in its political and personal and inner and vertical relations with lots and lots of scripture would probably be very, very protective and stimulating for me on that island.

- Thank you, Pastor John. Richard Baxter's A Christian Directory can be tricky to buy online because I think it's out of print. Of course, you can read it online for free by searching for it in Google Books, or you can search for printed copies for sale by Googling the book's ISBN number.

That number is 1-877-611131. That's 1-877-611131. Thank you for listening to this podcast. Please email your questions to us at askpastorjohn@desiringgod.org. At desiringgod.org, you'll find thousands of other free resources online from John Piper. I'm your host, Tony Ranke. Thanks for listening. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)