Using the "recent posts" widget

I am using the theme Twenty Twelve and I have activated the widget “recent posts” on my main sidebar however, when I hover over one of the posts that is listed and the little hand with one finger up icon appears, I click on the post then receive the message “well this is somewhat embarrassing, it seems we can’t find what you’re looking for. Perhaps searching can help”.

As I’m new to wordpress (and website development in general), I’m guessing that I’m missing a step.

How do I link my posts to the widget? I’m trying to make it so that one post appears on my front page (I do not have the “static page” option set) and then on the sidebar is the list of past posts and people can click on whatever post they want in order to read it…so they don’t have to search through each post and so I don’t have to clog up my front page with all my posts.

Thanks