God foresees our failings. He has provided a way to get around our failures. He will “defer His anger” to allow us a chance to repent. That way when we finally come to our senses, we have some hope of gaining forgiveness. He takes our rebellious nature into account, and has been doing this from the beginning.
It was because He foresaw this pattern of our behavior that He provided a Savior for us. Mormon 9:12 teaches: “Behold, he created Adam, and by Adam came the fall of man. And because of the fall of man came Jesus Christ, even the Father and the Son; and because of Jesus Christ came the redemption of man.” These things interrelate.
Eventually, we will all see the wisdom of how God deals with us. Eventually we will come to see His great mercy. Indeed, every knee will voluntarily bow before Him and admit His wisdom. As we do this, we will at last be grateful to Him.
We will praise Him, and see He deserves praise because His plan was wise, and just, and merciful. Though we fail to grasp this at present, He already sees our final gratitude as we catch a fuller view of His great plans for us. We will then realize He has acted all along in a merciful and benign way toward His children. It will be true He has done this for His “praise” for we will surely praise Him as we see His plan in its true, full light. Nephi’s statements will then make sense. Hindsight will greatly improve our understanding of God’s purposes.
We will see how very patient God has been with us all along. He has endured our rebellions for a season. In the end, we will find His patience with us all the more remarkable because He has sustained us from moment to moment by lending us breath as we have gone about in rebellion against Him. Of course, seeing it then will not merit the same reward as following and obeying it now. Only by seeing it now, while being tested and tried in the crucible of the second estate, do we prove ourselves worthy of the great rewards God holds in waiting for His faithful servants. Nephi calls us to repent and take seriously this Gospel we have been given.