In the Old Testament when Jeremiah attempted to quit the ministry he said, Jeremiah 20:9 But if I say, "I will not mention him or speak any more in his name," his word is in my heart like a fire, a fire shut up in my bones. I am weary of holding it in; indeed, I cannot.
When the French philosopher, Blaise Pascal was converted, he described his conversion experience as one word, "Fire"
James Stewart, one of the greatest Scottish preachers in this century once said, "When all is said and done, the supreme need of the church is the same in the 20th Century as it was in the first: that men be on fire for Christ.
The apostle Paul was a man like that.
In Romans 1:14-16 he describes this fire that was in him and gives us the reason why we exist to communicate the grace of God.
Romans 1:14-16 I am obligated both to Greeks and non-Greeks, both to the wise and the foolish. 15That is why I am so eager to preach the gospel also to you who are at Rome. 16I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile.

What Paul is speaking about here is a fire that is burning within his heart. This may not be immediately apparent from this passage, but if you study the content a little more closely, you will discover that Paul is a man with a Holy heartburn.
In vs. 15. "I am eager to preach the gospel."
This phrase is really two words in the original Greek text. prothumon euangelitzesthai. The first of these words is a very active word, and it comes from the same stem as a Greek word for "fire" or "burning" The second word means to share the gospel. It is the word from which we get our word, "evangelist". In other words, Paul is saying, "I have a burning within my heart to tell the good news. There is a fire that ablaze within my being that compels me to share the gospel of Jesus Christ."
Church, everyone of us has had that spark applied to our hearts when we were filled with the Holy Spirit and I pray that today we would not suppress that spark, but that we would allow the Holy Spirit to fan it into flame until it becomes a roaring fire of passion for a lost and dying world.
The first reason that Paul reveals why we compelled to communicate God's grace is that it is:

I. Mandated By the Call from Above.
Romans 1:1
At the beginning of this chapter, Paul stresses that he is an apostle, a messenger specifically commissioned by Christ to spread the good news.
Paul says that the reason he must go and tell others about Christ is because of the call of God on his life.
This call begins with the conversion experience which Paul describes in Acts 25.
On the road to Damascus to do away with these crazies called Christians. On the way he is confronted by the claims of the living Christ upon His life, and marvelously saved.
Paul's conversion is followed by his commissioning, as he explains to Agrippa that Jesus said to him, "Paul, I have appeared to you today to make you a minister and a witness. "Whereupon, O Agrippa, I was not disobedient to the heavenly vision."
When Peter, James and John were interrogated as to why they so brazenly shared the gospel, they replied simply, "We ought to obey God!"
Look again at 2 Cor. 5:17-20. As ambassadors of Christ we are to speak His message of reconciliation just as if it were God himself who was making His appeal for us. Our lord's orders are very clear. When we come into that life changing experience with Jesus Christ, He immediately appoints us His ambassadors, to speak out His message of reconciliation. He does not give us the option of waiting until someday when we might have more time, or when the circumstances are more fitting, or when we are in the right neighborhood, or when our health improves, or when our kids have graduated and moved out, or when we are more mature spiritually.
He does not give us that option. He requires of us immediately to be obedient to Him. The woman at Samaria was a spiritual baby, yet she ran and told the whole village about this one who had given her living water and changed her life.
And when it comes to not having the time, look at Jesus own example. He was never too busy. He always had time to invite the little children to sit on His knee. In the middle of a busy itinerary, the disciples tried to shoo them away, but Jesus found the time. He had time to heal a woman who touched the hem of His garment when thousands thronged about Him. She saw how busy He was, and thought, "He will never have time for me, but if I could just touch His clothes" and what did Jesus do? He stopped the procession. He canceled the parade so that He could minister to that one shy little lady in her personal moment of need. Jesus always had time for those who needed Him, and in John 20:21 His words echo throughout the ages: "So send I you!"
So we must obey the call from above.
The second factor that motivates me to share the gospel of Christ is:

II. Moved by The Crowd All Around Us

vs. 14. "I am a debtor to both the Greeks and the Barbarians; both to the wise and the unwise.
Today we are in an age of picking and choosing. We make excuses for our lack of evangelism across the canyons of color and culture. We make excuses for our lack of fellowship across the divide of denominationilsm. We hide behind the smoke screen of Homogeneous units, because we believe that like responds to like.
We have forgotten that Jesus said He has come to make all ground level at the foot of the cross. We have forgotten that Paul wrote under the inspiration of the blessed Holy Spirit in Colossians 1:19 that God saw fit through Christ on the Cross to draw together in unity everything that is in earth and in heaven.
I'm so glad that there will be no divide in heaven. There will be no Baptists in heaven. No Methodists. No Pentecostal Holiness. Just Jesus People. Plain and simple Jesus people.
And when we look around us, at the crowd that surrounds our church's, 90% of them on their way to hell in a hand basket, we should be compelled by that fire that burns within our hearts.
Look at vs. 14 again. Strange words. Paul, as far as we know, had never seen, nor done business with these people. How could he be indebted to them? And how would he repay that debt? But Paul was not speaking of a financial obligation. He was speaking a truth that when anyone becomes a recipient of the saving grace of our Lord Jesus he immediately becomes indebted to the rest of humanity to share that grace.
Romans 13:8 says, "Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for he who loves his fellow man fulfills the law." And how can we love our fellow man without feeling a tremendous burden for the lostness of their souls.
Let me illustrate for you.
Imagine for a moment you are on a cruise to Honolulu. Right in the middle of the ocean you come across the scene of a shipwreck. There are thousands of people without life jackets swimming frantically against the tide. Hundreds of miles from land, they are drowning one by one. Men, women, boys and girls. All drowning. You look around and you see all of those life preservers aboard your ship. You look back at the drowning mass. You know that if you throw out those life preservers you will save those people. The question is, do you owe them anything? Is it our responsibility they are where they are? Did we cause the shipwreck? Did we have anything to do with them boarding that ship in the first place? Absolutely not. Yet there is not a single sane person who would deny that we owe it to those drowning souls to throw out the life jackets. We are indebted to them. It is our responsibility.
This is what Paul is trying to say. We are living in a sea of drowning souls. God has given us a life preserver and we are indebted to throw it out to them.
Church, it is a debt. Are we honoring it?
We have more ordained ministers in the US than in every other country combined. 1,330,000.
We have more Christian radio and TV stations than the rest of the world.
There is more Christian literature in the English language than in all the other languages put together.
There are 60,000 young people attending Bible colleges.
In America there are more people in Sunday Schools than in the rest of the world combined.
There are Bibles in 100,000 hotel and motel rooms.
In spite of all of these things in our favor, it takes an average of 4 Christians to lead 1 person to Christ every 365 days!
In our denomination last year, 6000 churches that meet every Sunday, recorded zero baptisms for the entire year.
Why? We are not understanding the nature of our heavenly calling and we are blind to the catastrophe of human depravity that prevails around us. We have taken our lights and hid them under a bushel. Our spirituality is suffocating.
We ought to have such a heartburn for the lost that it causes us to weep when we see a man or a woman, a boy or a girl without Christ.
Once again we can look at the model that Jesus presented to us. Whenever He saw the crowds He had compassion on them because they were like a sheep without a shepherd.
When that arrogant lost man on the freeway cusses you out because he thinks his a better driver than you, how do you respond. Jesus would have wept at the realization that he was lost. When you see that snot faced little urchin steel a candy bar at the store, or push her way in front of you, how do you respond? Jesus would have wept at the prospect of her lostness.
San Antonio is full of them. All around us. Lost people. Broken homes, broken lives. Broken hearts. Broken marriages. But God can put them back together again, if only they knew. And how will they know if no one tells them?
Every 24 hrs., 146,000 people die. That is 6000 every hour. By the time our service ends this morning, 9000 people will have died. 7,200 will end up in hell.
Our hearts should be on fire to share the gospel because of the Call from above me, because of the crowd around me, and finally, we see in the example of Paul's life that our hearts ought to be burning within us to share the gospel because we are:
III. Motivated By the Cross Behind Us.

:16 What power is Paul speaking of?
I believe that is speaking of the power of the cross.
Paul's thoughts were forever fixed upon the power of what was accomplished through the cross of Christ. Whenever he looked upon a lost person I believe that he had this image of a dying savior on a cross shedding His blood for that person.
We sing that old song, "I have decided to follow Jesus" One stanza, "The cross before me, the world behind me."
Should be, "The Cross behind me, the world before me" It is the event of the Cross behind us which constrains us to share the love of Christ to the world before us. Have you looked at Calvary lately?
In 2 Cor. 5:14 Paul writes: "For Christ's love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all..."

A father worked a railway draw bridge over a large river. One day during the summer he took his young son with him to see how the bridge worked. He showed him all of those massive gears. Before long they went back to the control room to get something to drink. The dad got busy with some paper work, and the time went by. Little Johnny got bored and went exploring.
All of a sudden, the alarm went, reminded the dad that the bridge had to be lowered. A passenger train was on it's way. Dad reached for the controls and began to lower the bridge. Just then he noticed a movement down where the gears were located. There to his horror, he saw little Johnny playing around. He knew that if he did not shut the machinery down his little boy would be crushed. Then he looked up and saw the train bearing down. It was full of summer vacationers. If the bridge was not lowered they would all plunge to their death. What would he do? For a moment he thought, then turning his head and breaking into a wailing cry for his son, he let the bridge settle into place.
The train clattered past, and he could not help noticing how carefree everybody on board was. Children playing, moms chatting, dads laughing, no one even knew the price that had just been paid for their lives!
Family, that heart rending story is insufficient to describe what God did for a lost world when He allowed His only son to die on Calvary so that they may escape the penalty of death for their sins, and 90% of the world today has no idea what He did for them. I am sure that if any one of us was a witness to that tragic scene on the bridge that day, we would not have rested until we had gone to everyone that was on the train to tell them what price the father had paid for their lives.

O, we need to catch a glimpse of the cross behind us again. The cruelty of the Roman Cross. The agony of Gethsemane. So that motivated by that we may be compelled to go and tell what He has done to bring peace and eternal life.
Paul knew that Jesus Christ took upon himself the sin of every man, woman, boy and girl. Lost in our sin, deserving nothing but God's judgment, Jesus provide a way for us to be made acceptable to God.
His death for every person proves His love for every person. We can look every person we meet in the eye and tell them with absolute assurance that somewhere way back there, there is a cross upon which Jesus died. And in dying He took upon himself all of our sins. All of our suffering. All of our sorrow. Every stripe that marked His back brought healing to our infirmities.
There is not a person in this world that Jesus does not love and that He did not die for. And all they need to do is know.
If we could only go and tell, I believe the world would change.
He loves the up-and outer's. He loves the down and out's. He loves the man who spent last night in a drunken stupor. He loves the woman who cheated on her husband. He loves the teenager who woke up this morning all strung our on drugs and alcohol. He loves the young lady who in a moment of confusion and deception took the life of her unwanted, unborn child. He loves the homosexual in his depraved and disgusting perversion of all that is holy, and He longs for all of these to be born again through the blood that he so willingly poured out on that Roman cross.
This is what Paul is trying to say when he says, "the love of Christ compels me!" This is why he says, "There is a burning in my heart to share the gospel of Jesus Christ."
Can you say it?

If enough of us say it, my brothers and sisters, then it will be said of us as it was said of the apostles. "These men who have tuned the world upside down have come here to us"