(Newser) – In the first days of the year, some House Republicans launched an attempt to ditch John Boehner as speaker—but he survived a vote after a number of colleagues said they'd spent the night praying, and God told them to let Boehner keep the job, notes the Washington Post in a report spotted by the Daily Intelligencer. Rep. Steve Southerland, for instance, looked to the Biblical story of Saul and David, in which David gets two chances to kill the king, but lets him go. The vote, however, was still perilously close for Boehner; had his votes been slightly fewer, the sitting speaker would have faced a second ballot for the first time in almost a century. (Read more House Republicans stories.)