Imagine that you are in a fertile place with delicious food, but no workshops and no factories. Then the Lord tells you to build a ship! When the Lord commanded Nephi to build a ship under such circumstances, what is the first thing out of Nephi’s mouth? He asked: "Where do I go to get the ore?" I can almost hear his mind going, "Okay, we’re going to need this, that, and this, but I don’t know where to get that, and where do I go to get this." Then he was off and running to do the part he knew how to do. Nephi just seemed to have this great sense of what he can accomplish through his own abilities and when he had reached his limits and needed to ask the Lord for help. For example, back when his steel bow broke, Nephi made a new bow out of wood, and then said, "Where should I go to get food?"
Then we sense Nephi saying, "I am going to build the ship, but it won’t be after the manner of men." It sounds like he had an idea of how he might approach the task. He was a smart guy. Maybe he was aware that the Lord was going to want it to be done differently than he would have done it, or perhaps even differently than anyone would have done it. And who knows? If Nephi had done it his way, it probably wouldn’t have worked so well.